


These Chains

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BDSM, Bondage, D/s, Edgeplay, Emotional Baggage, Eventual Romance, F/M, Face Slapping, Femdom, Flogging, Friends With Benefits, Hand Jobs, Marking, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Orgasm Denial, Phone Sex, Porn With Plot, Praise Kink, Sensation Play, Sensory Deprivation, Sexting, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-05-17 13:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. James Vega has settled into civilian life in San Diego. He's got a decent job, a reliable corner gym, an old friend or two, and until he runs into Shepard at a dive bar, he doesn't even feel like anything's missing. She just makes the world bigger, somehow, like she always has. He tries not to get swallowed up in it.</p><p>(He fails.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AKA: We were enjoying our mutually beneficial friends-with-benefits relationship so much that whoops, feelings happened.
> 
> Just a head's up: this is a WIP, and though I have an outline and lofty plans of posting a chapter every other week until it's finished, sometimes life/brain gets in the way. Apologies for any delays!
> 
> You have [argharies](http://argharies.tumblr.com/)/[tablecrumbs](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tablecrumbs/) to thank for this fic, and so do I. She's been an indescribably awesome sounding board ever since she served up "Vega + praise kink" to me on a silver platter (and I proceeded to lose my goddamn mind). Given the number of ideas she's contributed to this AU, this is definitely her brainchild. I'm just trying to do right by it while writing the most self-indulgent of self-indulgent fics. She also made a super-fantastic playlist that I definitely listened to a lot while writing, and you can find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EWqTym2cQU&list=PL3YcaaB5bfdSXgeUGPDwLz7mjnvb9Mt3S).
> 
> Please heed the tags. I know this subject matter isn't for everyone, and if it's not for you, that's 100% understandable. Keep yourself safe. To the best of my ability, I've tried to balance Shepard's renegade aggression against Risk Aware Consensual Kink. I will be adding more tags as we go along, and I'll indicate in the notes at the beginning of each chapter what kinks it will feature.
> 
> This AU bears startling resemblance to our modern reality here in the 2010s, except that the U.S. Armed Forces has been inexplicably replaced by the Alliance. At most, this fic can only boast a dusting of plot and some not totally insubstantial character development, so I wouldn't get too hung up on the details.

It's as disgusting as every previous excursion.

Floor sticks to her boots. It's not even floor anymore, not really, just the caked on layer after layer of beer and whiskey and questionable bodily fluids. Every time she comes here, she thinks about burning her boots afterward. She's not obsessed with cleanliness, understand, has spent plenty of time coated with dust and questionable bodily fluids—for days on end, the dirt caked into her eyelashes and beneath her nails—but this isn't good, clean grit, not like that. This is the scum of the barely living. This is the stench of the almost dead.

The boots stay outside, on her front doorstep, whenever she gets home. Maybe someone will steal them.

She slides into the seat at the bar she doesn't think of as hers, but it's always empty, anyway. It's a bad seat, no line of sight on the televisions strategically positioned around the room, not even the one with spider web veins of broken glass, but that suits her just fine. The bartender doesn't know her, because there's always a new bartender. The people here don't hold down jobs; they take one and then fly free like burning embers as soon as better pay, better benefits, better anything comes along. She throws back her whiskey and takes her first look around, eyeing the crowd for someone who might need just a little push.

There's only one person in this bar interested in her, and he's watching, his eyes flinty, his beer halfway to his mouth: on pause, waiting for her to notice him.

Her heart actually picks up speed for a few seconds, hard against her ribs. She recognizes him. It's been years since that mission they ran together, but it's clear that he recognizes her, too.

This is just her fucking luck. Nothing against the kid, but there's no one from that life she wants to see tonight. Or ever.

She'd planned to linger at the bar for a while, but now, she decides, better to call this outing a bust before he gets a dumb idea. She throws down a few bills and slides from her stool. The way she came in is not the way she'll go out; there's a back alley just past the bathrooms, and it won't take her past him, which suits her just fine.

She doesn't look over her shoulder to see if he's following her, because she wouldn't give away that she knows she has a tail. She hopes she doesn't. She's a hopeful gal, in these sorts of situations, and she remembers him being perceptive enough. Maybe he'll get the message that she doesn't want company, not even his.

The hallway reeks worse than the bar itself, but then she's breathing the relatively clean air of the alley, crisp and fierce this time of year after sundown, the salt bite of the ocean riding the thin breeze. She takes off for the corner of the building, planning to slip around and back to her bike.

She gets five steps before the door she just closed bangs open behind her. "Hey," a man's voice says.

She grits her teeth. Plenty of people would keep walking and hope he'd get the hint, but her nerves are too fried for that. She came here looking for a fight, after all.

Maybe he'll give her one.

* * *

He has no damn idea what Shepard's doing at a dive bar in San Diego, but it's her. She looks like she stepped straight out of that flat screen he watched her on years ago before he even enlisted, her hair cut just the same—dark, straight, barely brushing her collar—the same shadow falling over her face when she turns her head, just slightly, toward her shoulder. Toward him.

"What?" she says, not a question but a warning.

It's been three or four years, maybe, since they ran that mission together; totally plausible that she doesn't recognize or remember him, though that leaves a sour taste in his mouth. It was a hell of a run. Even with her record, he can't believe that one wouldn't stand out.

"Thought that was you," he bullshits, as if there was ever any doubt. "Been a few years, huh?"

He doesn't get exactly what's happening even as her shoulders go stiff, her hands roll into fists, and she cracks her neck to the side. His head's too jumbled right then, expecting one thing and receiving another, but later, he thinks, it was obvious. When she turns to face him, he can see the rough latticework of scars across her cheek and down her neck, hidden before by the fall of her hair. That's new, changed terrain from the last time he saw her; he remembers an unmarred cheek, smooth, dotted only by the faintest spatter of freckles. Only one time he got close enough to notice those, hunkered together behind an open door waiting for the opportune moment, her voice barely a wisp of sound when it hissed, " _Now_."

"Look, Vega," she says, and he's simultaneously pleased she's remembered and pissed at her tone, which makes his name sound like the mud on the bottom of her boots, "this isn't a good time."

He walks a few steps closer. Her words hardly even register. It's funny how he remembers her being taller; she's just of a height with him, her shoulders squared, leather jacket straining, but she always was larger than life, a giant in memory.

"What, are you real busy or something?" She didn't mind being ribbed a bit back then, usually gave as good as she got, but now her eyes narrow. "Come on, Shepard. Let me buy you a drink. For camaraderie's sake."

She actually laughs at that, rakes a hand through her hair to push it back from her face. She's got a punch of a laugh, harder than he remembers. "Oh, kid. If you still feel camaraderie, you don't want to get a drink with me. I'll ruin it for you." She bares her teeth in a slapdash grin. "Besides, I don't come to this damn bar to drink. The whiskey's abhorrent."

The irritation's faded, mostly to make way for his befuddlement, the attempt by his brain to reconcile this Shepard with the Shepard he knew. He remembers her prickly attitude, but her words have a new edge to them that they didn't, not even back then. "What do you come here for, then?"

She cocks her head to the side, the grin fading to a smirk, and then—

He's staggering back into the trash cans before he even feels the hit. It hurts his back first, the metal of the old cans digging in and clattering against the brick of the building. Crazy, the way your body can trick you when you aren't expecting to be punched in the fucking face. The pulsing ache of it spreads over his cheek, hot and pounding, and he stares up from the trash cans, disbelieving, at her.

She's not smiling anymore, not even close, a hard set to her jaw. "You up for it, Vega?" she taunts, her fists still raised. "Been a thousand years since I got into a scuffle with someone who might know what he's doing. Someone who's not even  _drunk_. I could use the practice."

He knows it's not the most pressing issue right now—that might be his potentially-fractured jawbone—but he still demands, "You come to this bar to pick fights with  _civilians_?"

"No one else is brave enough to hit back," she says, and she says  _brave_ like it means  _stupid_ , but he still heaves himself up from the trash cans to square off against her.

The alley is small, not a lot of room to maneuver, and she's hardly smaller than him—less muscle mass, but she knows how to use it. She's  _Shepard_ , notorious kicker of everyone's ass.

Hell.

At least, when he sees a punch coming, he can slip around it, formulate a counterstrike. She hits like a goddamn train, even when he's prepared for it, and she catches and avoids more of his blows than he does hers, but when he does get a hit in, she takes it silently, hardly a grunt to mark the victory.

There have been rumors that she isn't all human anymore, and he sort of gets where they're coming from.

She's bearing him back toward the dead end of the alley, and it doesn't seem like she's having trouble watching her footing amidst all the crap on the ground; she hits, he blocks, she ducks, he's just a little too slow to take advantage of the second she spends regrouping, and then she hits again. Cornered against the wall, he finally gets a punch in, and she staggers back, leaving him enough room to slip around her.

Her eyes glint, her smirk back. "Not bad, Vega."

That's a low blow, her voice warm with approval even as her sneer mocks him; he can feel it sink into his gut like warm honey. She comes after him again, a rain of fists, and he knocks the blows aside and gets a series of jabs in on her torso, none powerful enough to knock her back again. She slips under the final hook, grinning now.

"Oho, he can play after all," she crows, eyes darting for an opening. "Feeling the camaraderie yet?"

He's feeling  _something_ , and he doesn't think it's camaraderie, but some asinine mixture of humiliation and anger and burgeoning arousal, all three so bright and piercing and downright  _weird_ in combination that she gets a hit in while he's thinking about it.

"C'mon, you've got better moves than that," she laughs. He refocuses, stupidly buoyed by the exhilaration in her tone.

He'll swear later that it went on for hours, but really, it's probably only five minutes before she throws him to the ground and follows him down, a knee right in his stomach to hold him there.

"That was good," she says with relish. The hair's sticking to her neck with sweat, her eyes alight with some hedonistic pleasure. "You are at least five times as good as my usual punching bag."

She finally looks down at him—right at him, her eyes focused and fierce—and he looks at her lips, the wicked curl of them, because he's a dumbass, and maybe she  _could_ kill him, but that doesn't necessarily detract from her general hotness. She was hot back then, too. Damn if he didn't spend most showers during that op thinking of her, and feeling guilty about it.

Her knee slides down, off his stomach, and then her thighs are framing his hips, and she's got the back of his neck in her hand, her nails digging in.

"Don't move," she says, like an order, and with no other preamble, she leans down to kiss him.

It's not gentle. She uses her teeth. He wants nothing more than he wants to put his hands on her hips and hold her down, hold her to him, head fogged with lust, and two seconds ago this machine of a woman was throwing him away to the ground like he weighed nothing but now she's holding him there with her thighs like he's not allowed to go. Like she won't let him. The hand not wrapped around the back of his neck is pressing his shoulder into the ground. He gasps for air against her mouth, and her tongue slides over his lip, tasting the flesh she'd just bitten, maybe the blood dripping down from the split she opened against his teeth.

As abruptly as it began, it ends, her hand releasing the back of his neck. She sits up, hand patting his pockets in search of something, and pulls out his phone.

"I've got an offer you might be interested in," she says.

There's a hazy grin on his face that he can't help, not with her sitting on his lap and the bruise of her kiss still on his mouth. This was not exactly in the plan, but he can go along with it.

"Yeah, Lola?" he says. "What's—"

It shouldn't surprise him, but still, somehow, it does: she slaps him, right across the face, hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to bruise, not like that first punch she got in. She's nice enough to deliver it on the side that's still unscathed, too, which might just come down to her having his phone in her dominant hand.

She'd hated that nickname back then, even punched him for it, once. Given the recent beating, he can't blame himself too much for the brief memory lapse.

And the fading sting isn't half bad, either.

"If you call me that again, the result will be the same," she says matter-of-factly. The note of warning is different now than that first  _What?_ she barked from the end of the alley, like it's not a threat, but. An invitation, maybe.

He swallows. He can  _really_ go along with it.

She's keying something in, because he doesn't have a password on his phone and so she, of course, has already gained full access. She shifts a bit over his lap. If his cock gets any harder, it's going to tear a hole through his jeans, and he's sure that she knows.

Another phone rings. She pulls it from her back pocket, checks the number, and saves it. At least, he assumes that's what she does.

"What," he says, licking his lips, "is the offer?"

She looks down at him. He feels like a mess, and maybe, on the surface, she doesn't look much better—the sweat, the dirt, the messed-up hair—but her expression is composed, calmer, than anything he's seen on her face since he stepped into this alley, a thousand times more serene than his own scattered thoughts. This close, he can see the ragged pull of her scars in full detail, the green undertones in her hazel eyes catching the dim light.

"Seems like you're enjoying this," she says, still businesslike. "Incredibly, I am, too."

She cocks an eyebrow. He's supposed to say something, he thinks, so he clears his throat and says, "The punching, or the other stuff?"

She smiles. It's predatory, the look she always wore while lining up a target in her scope. "Maybe both. Would that bother you?"

She touches the hot skin where she slapped him, tracing a stinging line across his face.

That's…something.

"No," he decides.

"Good." She tucks his phone back into his pocket. "So. One night. We see where this goes."

"Your place or mine?" he says, already trying to remember what state he left his apartment in.

"I said  _one_ night," she says, getting to her feet, "not  _tonight_."

He frowns up at her. "Why not?"

She offers a hand down to help him up. "Because you just took a beating, and I like my meat fresh. You'll feel better tomorrow if you go home, take some painkillers, and go to sleep." She wiggles her fingers, impatient. "I'm being nice. Don't get used to it."

He takes the hand up. "When, then?"

"Tuesday," she says promptly. "Your schedule clear?"

He never works on Tuesdays. The club's dead that early in the week, and the kind of clients that come through aren't the kind he likes to entertain. "I'm free."

"I'll send you the address," she says, pulling her jacket straight. "Put some ice on that." She touches the swelling on his cheekbone, expert fingers probing carefully. "Good fight, Vega."

She leaves him in the alley. He takes a minute to compose himself, breathing the cold ocean breeze deep into his lungs, until he hears the roar of a motorcycle around the corner. The noise jolts him into action; he leaves the whole confusing episode behind him and sets out for home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

James doesn't have time that night to do much more than put some ice on his face, fall into bed, and rub one out; his head's not clear, and his brief encounter with Shepard seems like some kind of hazy dream, the kind he'd never admit to having.

The next morning, though, he wakes up with an aching face—lots of other things aching, too—and the sunlight coming in through his half-open curtains shines glaringly on the night before, on how pants-shittingly _weird_ it all was.

He fumbles for the water bottle on his side table and drinks half of it down in one go, which goes a long way toward making him feel more human. Gingerly, he picks up his phone. There's a new text message, fuzzy until his eyes focus.

_Sore?_

He's disgruntled all over again.

_You beat the shit out of me. Of course I'm sore._

The wait isn't long.

_That was nothing._

He tosses his phone down to the bed and stomps off to the bathroom to examine the damage. It's not so bad—not visually, at least, so he silently concedes that much to her. He can cover up the discoloration on his jaw before he goes to work tonight; he has to cake on the makeup for those stage lights, anyway.

From the other room, his phone buzzes again. He splashes water on his face and brushes his teeth before going to answer it.

_You got in a good hit or two yourself. I've got a hell of a bruise on my hip._

He tries to remember that punch—or maybe it was a knee—but the fight is a mess in his memory, a haze of adrenaline obscured by later arousal, and he can't place it. He can imagine the shadow of the bruise, though, spreading over her flesh, and he hasn't even seen her with her clothes off, but his mouth goes dry.

The next text isn't a text at all, but a picture, carefully posed. He can just make out the curve of her waist, flaring out to meet her hip, the jut of the bone and the bruise diffusing outward. There's a hint of her bare thigh, the tips of her fingers loose around the hem of her shirt, pulling it up. It shouldn't be so damn suggestive—hardly any of her body is exposed, the bruise front and center—but he's convinced that she means it that way, and that she somehow knew that this would get him going.

He's supposed to meet Cortez for lunch in half an hour. This is a problem.

He's not good at _this_ , either, whatever outrageous, flirtatious game she's playing. He's better in person, making it up as he goes. He wracks his brain for something to say, something more interesting and less base than _Jesus fucking Christ_ , and just when he's gotten halfway to deciding not to respond at all, the phone buzzes in his hand.

_Fair's fair. Show me how your ribs are looking._

He wishes he didn't feel so bonelessly grateful for the direction. He's way out of his depth with this frankly terrifying woman, but if she wants to take him along for the ride, he'll heel.

He prods at his ribs under his shirt and finds the spot she's talking about. He can't believe she remembers any of the punches she landed last night, let alone which specific spots might have been hard enough to bruise. He tries to get the camera aimed just right, but it takes a few tries to get the right glimpse of his body that he wants to send her; it's vain, but he makes sure she can see his abs in addition to the bruise just beginning to turn purple.

 _This gonna be a regular thing?_ he asks her, and makes his bed while he waits for her to text back.

_The texting, or the bruises?_

He yanks a t-shirt over his head and jams his wallet into his pocket. _Both._

_Guess we'll find out._

He doesn't think that requires a response, so he stuffs his phone into his pocket, too, and takes a last look in the mirror before stomping down the rickety stairs and out into the crisp November sunlight. There's a café around the corner, close enough to walk, and he's got five minutes to get there before Cortez ribs him about being late.

Cortez still ribs him, obviously, letting out a low whistle when he spots the shadow on James's face. "What the hell happened to you?"

James sits down, picks up a menu, and frowns down at it. "Nothing."

"You look like you got punched in the face."

He grunts. "I did. I didn't start it," he adds sharply, seeing the lecture coming from a mile off. "It was—"

He changes his mind mid-sentence. Last night, when Shepard bailed out of the bar as soon as he caught her eye, he'd thought she just didn't want to see _him_. Now, though, with the benefit of hindsight, he knows there's no reason for that; there was never bad blood between them. She wouldn't be hitting on him if there was.

So was she just not in the mood for company, or is she hiding? Until he knows for sure, he shouldn't go blurting out her name to anybody.

"Just this chick," he says, wincing internally. "Picked a fight."

Cortez starts laughing, right on cue. "Oh, man," he says, grinning. "What'd you do? Make that joke about your pecs again?"

"Laugh it up, Esteban," he mutters.

"I'm just saying, dude, your game's been off lately. Maybe throw in the towel and get a dog."

"Yeah, and maybe you shut your mouth, pendejo."

The waitress, thankfully, chooses that moment to come over and take their orders. Cortez isn't wrong; last night was the first time he'd gone out for something other than work, groceries, or this lunch thing they do in weeks, maybe months. It's definitely been months since his last girlfriend called it quits. He's been taking extra hours since then, leaving less time to fool around.

"Seriously though, are you okay?" Cortez gives him that look—god, he hates that look, the one that makes him feel like he's been put under a microscope. "You've been working a lot lately."

"If you can call it work."

"Hey, there's always a spot open at the garage if you want it."

James waves this off. "Work's fine. Seriously. I like what I do."

Cortez gets distracted by the arrival of their beers, which is for the best, because James's phone buzzes in his pocket. He fishes it out the way someone would hold a live grenade, bracing himself.

It's another picture, this one of a softer bruise on her collarbone. The image just fits in the slender column of her neck, the line of her jaw, her barely-parted lips. Her shoulder's completely bare, no straps or fabric in evidence.

He locks the screen, swallowing, and wishes he hadn't opened it.

"What, did she punch you and then give you her number?" Cortez looks like he's having a hard time containing his glee. "That's messed up, even for you."

James smirks at him. "Maybe messed up is what I need."

Cortez lets the topic go after that. Can't blame him.

* * *

The next few days are more of the same. He gets up late, hits the gym, covers up his progressing bruises before he goes on stage, and comes home to more texts and pictures from Shepard, who seems determined to drive him out of his goddamn mind before they even make it to Tuesday. The night usually ends with his eyes closed, his hand wrapped tight around his cock, like not a day has passed since those showers a few years ago, the image of her burned into his brain—but now he has a little more to go on than a body hidden by armor.

Only a little, though. Her pictures tantalize, but never show anything too sensitive. He's starting to think the ladder of her ribcage is plenty sensitive, though, that the crooked length of her leg can somehow be sexual all on its own. Maybe because he can imagine himself beside it, his hand cupped around the joint, mouth pressed to the inside of her knee, tongue flicking out to taste the warmth of her skin—

It's Monday night, and he comes with a bitten-down groan on that image, of her legs spread wide and her cunt open above him, waiting for his mouth to move there.

On Tuesday morning, she texts him an address. It's in the nicer part of town; she probably can't see her neighbors on their adjoining properties. Step up from the small apartment he can afford.

_See you at six. Don't be late._

He spends more time at the gym than usual, a longer time showering, and aimlessly searches through Netflix for something to get him through the next few hours. Waiting is hell. He bets that she knows, and that's exactly why she didn't demand that he get his ass to her place back on Thursday night.

She's uncharacteristically silent the rest of the day. He gets to quarter past five and gives up, throwing on his jacket and hitting the lights harder than necessary on his way out. The drive should only take thirty minutes, but maybe being early will put him in her good books. If she even has those.

By the time he gets to her house, he wishes he'd taken a peek at it on street view ahead of time. Maybe then he'd have been prepared.

It's huge—too big for one person who, presumably, lives alone. The property's surrounded by trees, but even if it wasn't, he didn't see another turn off on the winding road that led him up this hill. She doesn't have neighbors.

He gives himself a few seconds in his car to try and get himself together, one last time, and then he walks up to the door, trying not to gape at the building sprawling toward the cliff's edge before him. It's only one level by the looks of it, but it stretches out far enough to the left and right to make up for it.

He rings the bell, which does, at least, sound like a normal doorbell. He hears her move from the far end of the house, the sound of her footsteps faint at first but growing louder, until the door jolts and pulls inward, revealing her.

She's barefoot, and he notices, because it puts her maybe an inch shorter than him, wearing sneakers; her toenails are painted a dark, forest green. He doesn't know what he expected, but she looks a lot less intimidating than she did the other night, her arms bared by her old, worn tank top, the ends of her jeans rolled up.

One brow lifts. "You're early."

"I can go sit in my car another fifteen minutes, if you're busy," he retorts, leaning forward against the door.

She smiles; her lips barely quirk, but her eyes crinkle deep at the outer corners. "I'll find something to do with you."

Warm as her voice is, it carries a vague threat, too. He's not sure if the chill down his spine is fear or anticipation. Maybe both.

She stands back to let him in. "Shoes off," she orders, already moving off down the hall, and he hurries to obey, close the door, and follow after her. "We need to talk about a few things first."

"Like?" he prompts, just as she turns into an open doorway. The entire far wall of the room is glass, the curtains wide, a perfect view of the ocean glittering far below them. It's an office, bookcases lining nearly every piece of wall except where a small desk is pushed right up against it.

She sits in one of the chairs near the window and points to another for him. He follows suit, a little stunned by the view.

"Look," she says, crossing one leg over the other, "I like some unconventional things. If you've never explored them before, that's okay, but it could be…fun…if you're willing to try."

He clears his throat, interest piqued. "Like what?"

"Like the slap, the other night." She touches her own cheek to remind him—like he's forgotten. "Not hard enough to bruise, just hard enough to sting. Not like the fight. I wouldn't hit you like that. But I might tell you what to do, expecting you to obey, and if you don't, the result would be similar. Are you interested in that?"

Her face stays so calm while she says this, like she doesn't know that his blood's racing now, his pulse something he can hear, low and pounding in his ears. He forces his voice to work, to admit it. "I'm into it."

Her eyes light on his. The sunshine coming through the windows catches in them, picking out the rich brown mixed into the murky hazel of her irises.

"I have a few other ideas about what you might be into," she says, low and suggestive.

He tries not to shift under the weight of that stare, but it's not easy; she makes him feel like she's got him pinned to the ground again, the wind knocked from his lungs.

"But you need a word, in case I do something you really _aren't_ into. Two words, actually. One for slow down, one for full stop. Yellow, red. You'll remember?"

"Like a traffic light," he says.

"Like a traffic light," she agrees. "You sure you'll remember?"

"Yellow to slow down, red to stop. I'll remember."

He should wonder a little more about these unconventional things she likes, if it's anything more intense than a slap in the face or an order expected to be obeyed, and he thinks she'd tell him if he asked for a list, but—where's the fun in that? He's not opposed to surprises.

She gets to her feet, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "Good. One more thing."

He waits, trying to look as cool and collected as she does. He doesn't think he's succeeding

"You don't come until I say."

For a second, he thinks he's misheard her; there's nothing suggestive about her tone, just an outright order, brisk and even. He stares up at her. She raises an eyebrow, waiting, her arms folded across her chest, the swell of her breasts visible above the scooped neckline of her shirt.

"Whatever you want," he tells her; he means it to come out with a smirk, easy and flirtatious, but he sounds strained and too earnest even to his own ears—maybe that's why a smile spreads across her mouth, glints in her eyes.

"Come on," she says, jerking her head toward the door.

He should ask her other things—why she's here, why she has this huge empty house, why she picks fights with strangers in that dive of a bar—but that, he thinks, should be for later, when they're both a little more relaxed. He follows her out into the hallway and down to the very end, to another open door. This one faces the ocean, too, the curtains wide open, but there's no one to see them through all that glass.

She turns back to face him, an oddly curious look on her face, and just when he's about to reach out to touch her—hands on her shoulders, maybe, thumbs resting on the exposed line of her collarbone, or palms pressed to her hips, fingers curling into her flesh—she says, "Don't touch me unless I tell you to."

She doesn't give him time to process that, doesn't wait for him to protest; her hand slides up the nape of his neck, nails scratching through his hair, and she slots her mouth against his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sexting, some marking


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

He doesn't move, but he's never wanted to touch anyone so badly in his life.

It's a different kiss than Thursday, and at the same time, it isn't. Her hand tilts his head exactly where she wants it, but instead of her thighs holding him to the ground, it's the other hand holding him in place, fingers firm but not tight on his shoulder. A reminder that she expects him to play by the rules, but not actual, physical restraint. He could shrug her off, see what happens if he disobeys.

But she's put him in a position he doesn't exactly _want_ to move from. Her lips are warm, soft where they meet his, kinder than Thursday's bruising force, and the warmth of her body is inches away, radiant. Her teeth nip at the newly-healed seam in his lip, a reminder, and the jolt of arousal pushes off all thoughts of disobeying.

She pulls back, opening up a bit of space between them, and he opens his eyes. The scars on her cheek are sharp in the sun streaming over them, valleys of light and shadow, the green in her eyes more prominent this close. She's wearing some kind of lip balm, and he can smell it all over his mouth, coconut and still wet from the press of her mouth.

God, he would do a lot of things to put his hands on her ass right now. On any damn part of her, just to drag her back to him. Her lips are rosy and warm, a bright contrast to the face still barely flushed.

She steps back, taking the pressure of her hands with her, and gives him a perfunctory up-and-down sweep with her eyes. "Clothes off."

She moves away, across the room, and he sees the space in more clarity now that she's walking away from him and deeper into it: the sparse furniture, the neutral shades of white and black everywhere, the huge bed. He wonders if she ever gets lost in that thing, sleeping in it by herself; even a double is too wide for him after years of a bunk.

She sits down on the bench at the foot of the bed, crosses one leg over the other, and raises her eyebrows at him. "Now," she prompts, a note of warning in her voice.

He takes a step away from the door and shrugs out of his jacket. He'd take it a little slower, but it seems like she's looking for efficiency more than a show, so he drops the jacket on the bench beside her and pulls his shirt over his head. There is no sexy way to take off socks—fuck knows he's tried—but she's not looking at his hands or even his bare chest, her eyes fixed on his face, her expression unmoved.

It's unnerving, the way she watches him. It's wildly different than any other girl he's taken home, a vast deviation from the script that everyone follows. Something about the blind corners makes him more eager. He unbuckles his belt, unzips his jeans, steps out of them.

"Boxers, too," she says, fingers drumming against the edge of the bench. Finally, her eyes dip to his navel and back up, assessing, but if there's any heat in them, he can't see it. She looks downright _bored_. He's trying to keep his eyes on her face and away from the cleavage he has a great view of at this angle, match her poker face look for look, but after all the tantalizing glimpses of the last few days he just wants to see her.

He has a feeling it's going to be a long wait.

He takes off the boxers and tosses them on top of the pile of his clothes. She jerks her head toward the bed. "On your back."

He hops up with a smirk, because there's nothing _not_ to like about that, and Christ, her mattress is perfect—not too soft, but not too firm, either. He sinks down on one pillow with a groan.

"Comfortable?" There's a trace of amusement in her voice now. The bed jiggles as she climbs up after him.

He glances down at her, hoping at least the shirt's come off. No dice. "I've gotta get one of these."

She chuckles, which he likes, and slides up until she's kneeling between his thighs, which he likes even more. She nudges his legs wider, making a comfortable little space for herself, and then leans up over him, taking his hands and folding his fingers into a grip on the sheets at his sides.

The bed's unmade, he realizes, the sheets and blankets rumpled, and he wants to ask her how she broke the damn habit, because he still makes his bed military-neat about ten seconds after waking up—as long as someone didn't ambush him in an alley the night before—and it's been a year since he was a military man.

"Don't let go," she warns, planting her hands on either side of his shoulders. "I won't be happy."

He's about to think of something smart to say to that, has it half formulated on his tongue when she leans down and her lips brush a spot right behind and beneath his ear, her breath sneaking out against his neck. Her teeth are next, tugging at his earlobe, and then, as if he didn't have enough goosebumps already, she speaks directly into his ear, low enough to make him shiver.

"How many times did you get off since Thursday, thinking about this?" Another kiss at the hinge of his jaw and down beneath it. "That wasn't a rhetorical question," she adds.

He should feel guilty—embarrassed, probably—to admit to it, but he's already alarmingly hard, so maybe a wire's gotten crossed in his brain. "Four."

Her teeth scrape the crook of his neck, her tongue following. He turns his head to give her better access, and a puff of her breath cools the spit slick on his flesh. He thinks it's a laugh, one he can't hear.

"Not today?" she guesses, one hand sliding up to get what grip it can in his hair to hold him still, leaving his neck and shoulder open to her. She takes advantage, mouth testing out which spots make him twitch.

"Would've been bad manners," he rasps. Even at this angle, if he strains his eyes sideways enough, he can see her, the line of her throat, the curve of her breasts, the shadow of her collarbone.

"Bad manners," she repeats, her lips curling. She leaves a bite at the furthest edge of his shoulder, a soft sting of pain.

"Like going to Taco Bell an hour before someone cooks you a homemade meal."

She hums—in agreement, he thinks—and shifts to lean over his other side. Her shirt brushes his cock in the motion, stiff against his belly. Her expression doesn't change, but he's sure she did it on purpose, and now even that little touch is gone, her attention back on his unmarked shoulder. She hits a good spot, halfway down his neck, with a suckling kiss, and he shuts his mouth mid-groan, shuddering.

"Don't hold back on my account," she says.

"That a suggestion or an order?" he asks, wondering how much backtalk he can indulge in before she decides he's being disrespectful.

She nips at his shoulder, more sharply than she has so far. "I wouldn't ignore my suggestions, if I were you." Her hand slides down to thumb over his nipple, slender fingers stroking over his skin, and then she gets the spot again, lips sucking light pressure.

He lets the moan out this time, and she murmurs, "That's it," and sinks down to drape her body over his. Ostensibly it's to move the attention of her mouth to his chest, but it has the added benefit of pressing her right up against his aching cock. Her shirt's old and worn out enough that the fabric doesn't scratch, but the pressure without any dedicated movement is torture.

He's sure she knows. Shepard doesn't do things on accident.

She makes her way lower, one unhurried inch at a time, as if determined to chart every inch of him with her mouth before she moves on. He gets impatient right around the time that her breasts are pressed to his cock, her tongue moving lazy circles above his navel, and flexes his hips against her, head lifting up to watch.

The looks she gives him stops the motion right there, good as it feels.

"I'll let that slide on the grounds that my instructions to you were not clear enough," she says. "To review: you will not touch me, you will not let go of the sheets, and you will not try to get yourself off, however feeble those attempts might be." She holds his gaze, her eyes hard. "Are we clear?"

"Clear," he says, his head falling back to the pillow. The soft warmth of her is still pressed against him, and he's nearly quivering with the effort not to seek relief, but he doesn't fight her.

"Good," she replies, shifting a little lower. She presses her lips back to his skin, below his belly button, a trail descending, meandering. She nibbles at the cut of his hip and follows the line down, and he squeezes his eyes shut, breath coming harsh when the silk of her skin brushes his cock.

"Poor Vega." The touch of her hand on his thigh surprises him, but not as much as the soft touch of her breath on the length of him. He groans at the near-contact. "Is this what you want?"

The swift, slick warmth of her tongue on the underside of his cock is gone almost before he gets to enjoy it. "Yes," he grinds out, his hands clenched so tight in the sheets that he doesn't think he'll be able to remove them if the time ever comes.

"Yes, what?" she asks lazily, her thumb tracing up the inside of his thigh. "You know how to beg, right? Be specific. I want to hear what you want."

"I want your mouth on my cock," he says, his nerves flayed raw, "please, _please_ —"

She sucks him between her lips, slides her mouth slow halfway down his length and up again. He honest-to-god _whimpers_ , fingers holding tighter to the sheets, because soon there will be room for only a few thoughts in his head and one of them had better be that he can't let go, because maybe this is hell but as far as he can tell it's _his_ kind of hell.

She lets his cock slide from the incredible heat of her mouth, and says, "Remember the rule?"

"Don't let go," he says, the words tight.

The gust of her laugh comes with a soft, slow lick, right around the head of his cock. "The rule we talked about in my office, Vega."

Her office was a damn long time ago, but he dredges it up with what blood is left in his brain. "I don't come until you say," he says at last.

"Exactly," she agrees, and her mouth closes around him again.

She's slow, methodical, like she already knows his limits and that a too-quick touch is going to end things. He has to fight not to buck against her, deeper into her mouth—it's always rude, and here it's rude _and_ against the rules—and he shakes with the effort of it, his head thrown back, neck straining, a moan bursting from his mouth when her mouth takes a little more of him, when she pauses at the head to suck and flick her tongue against him. Her hand curls around his hip, as if to help hold him down, and he's pathetically grateful for the reminder, for the restraint.

No matter how slow she goes, though, this is all going to end soon, because she's sucking him deeper into the wet heat of her mouth and the arousal's coiling tighter and tighter and his hands are clenching in the sheets and—

"Stop," he gets out, straining to hold off release, "stop, stop—"

She stops, letting him slip from her mouth with a wet _pop_ , and presses a kiss to the inside of his thigh, open-mouthed and messy. "Good," she says, the pleased note in her voice dragging down his cock like a physical touch. "Relax. You're okay." Another kiss, to the other thigh. "We good?"

"Green," he croaks out, and follows it up with a deep, shuddering breath. He's off the precipice now but he knows if she so much as breathes on him in a friendly fashion that he'll be right back there.

She slides away, off the bed. "Good. You're doing great."

He forces his eyes open when he hears the sound of fabric sliding over skin, lifts his head up enough to see her, at the foot of the bed, her jeans and underwear already gone—he didn't even get a look at them, if she was wearing any—and her shirt dropping to the chair. Her arms twist behind her back, unclasping her bra.

She looks fucking perfect, the amber light of the sun slipping down toward the horizon behind her, casting her body in stark strips of light and shade. She's compact up top, her shoulders lean and powerful, just enough breast to fill his cupped hands, her stomach lightly muscled, her hips flared wide. She's got scars across her ribs to match the scars on her face, same side, and a few other stray marks, but he's more interested in the dusky pink of her nipples, the freckle that stands out on the pale flesh of her thigh, the neatly-trimmed V of her pubic hair.

Some of the blood's come back to his head, but not enough, apparently, because he says, "You ever gonna let me touch you, Lola?"

It takes two seconds to think, _Oh, shit,_ and it also takes her two seconds to get back on the bed to deliver a stinging slap to his cheek. He works his jaw, wincing, but he doesn't move his hands.

"You were doing so well, too." She strokes the spot she just struck, fingers caressing. "I was going to let you touch yourself for this next part, but I think your hands had better stay where they are."

She slides up his body until her knees are braced against the bed, on either side of his shoulders, and she's kneeling above him, her thighs parted. She drapes one arm over the headboard, the other hand snaking down to cup the back of his head, bringing him closer to her cunt.

"Lick," she says.

Better that he's not touching himself, he thinks, because he'd come right fucking now at the first taste of her. She's wet, glistening, and he slides his tongue right over the whole of her. The noise she makes is new, a soft exhale, her fingers flexing against the back of his head. She rocks a little against his mouth, seeking out more of his tongue, and he gives it to her, circling wide around the bud of her clit.

Another low breath. "That's so good." She lets go of her hold in his hair and rests her other arm on the headboard, too, leaning forward against it. Her knees inch a little wider, bringing her closer to his mouth; he doesn't have to strain to taste her now. He licks again, just inside her outer lips, up one side and down the other, and gets a breathy moan from her for his trouble. Maybe he had some lingering doubts that she's as into this as he is—easy idea to entertain, the way she's been so controlled since the minute he walked in the door—but they're gone now, dripping away down his chin. She doesn't choke on her moans the way he did, but she rocks against his mouth, and every now and then, when his tongue flicks up against her clit, her body shudders above him.

"Perfect, god, James, you're so good at this," she says, her voice rich and warm and just a little strained. His hold on the sheets loosens and tightens again; he doesn't think he's ever come without _something_ touching his cock but there's a first time for everything, especially if she keeps talking like that—

And she plans to, by the sound of it, one hand dipping lazily from the headboard to scratch nails through his hair as she hisses and says, "Fuck, do you know how good your mouth feels?"

He doesn't see how she can get out a whole, coherent sentence. Between the taste of her in his mouth and the sound of her voice in his ears and her body stretching above him, he doesn't have a single damn word left in his head. Everything's starting to go hazy, muzzy, dreamlike; he circles her clit with his tongue, narrowing with every pass, until he's right over it and stroking, short soft licks that tear a moan from her throat.

"Right there," she says, her fingers pressing tighter against his scalp, "yes, _yes_ , that's so good, James, your _mouth_ —"

He knows when she comes, even if she hardly makes a sound at all; her whole body shudders, her hips buck against his mouth, and her fingers go limp in his hair.

He keeps licking, because she didn't tell him to stop—but lower, deeper in her folds, slow, easy motions. Her hand slides down to cup his cheek, thumb stroking over his skin.

"Good boy," she praises, her voice gone soft and rough, and it's like her lips closing around his cock all over again; after all that, he's still so damn hard. "You didn't even let go, did you?"

He gives a single shake of his head; she rises up, off his mouth, and stretches upward, some joint in her back popping.

"I think you deserve a reward," she says. "Would you like that?"

"Yes. God, yes." He licks his lips, the taste of her still all over them.

"Stay."

She swings one leg over so that she no longer straddles him and rustles something on the nightstand; he doesn't turn his head sideways to look. He's having a hard enough time trying to work out how he's going to stop from coming the second he gets inside her— _if_ he gets inside her—like a goddamn teenager.

"You're doing great." Her voice is a purr, low and flattering, and he squeezes his eyes shut at the sound of it, which is how he misses her hand wrapping around his cock until it's already there. The sheets are a crumpled mess beneath the assault of his fingers. She unrolls a condom over the length of him, gives him a last squeeze, and then he feels the soft, smooth warmth of her inner thigh against his hip as she straddles him.

He opens his eyes for this. She's poised, ready, considering him, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, the sun flaring bright behind her. She's a little messy now, finally, her hair starting to lose its sleekness, frizzing and curling in odd directions where it's met the sweat on her neck, her face.

"I think we can move these," she decides, uncurling his hands from the sheets and pressing them up, beside his head, into the pillows. She lets go of one, and he's too slow on the uptake to try and take advantage, the same words on repeat— _don't touch don't touch don't touch_ —as she reaches down between them and presses the head of him against the warm slick of her.

He's not sure of the noise that comes from his own throat—it's a moan, or a whine, maybe, or something in between—as she eases down his length, slow, steady. She's halfway down when she catches his free hand and presses it into the mattress again; every instinct he has wants him to buck up, as deep into her as he can get, but he's quivering to hold still, shivering with the pleasure and the effort of focusing—

She flexes her hips, letting him slide almost all the way out of her, and thrusts down again, taking him to the root. His hips rise up to meet her, barely an inch, and her thighs squeeze around him in warning.

"Let me worry about this," she tells him, rising up an inch and falling again, the barest rocking of her hips. Just the tight heat of her and the tiniest motion, after all she's done to him already, is enough to pacify him. "I'm going to take care of you, I promise."

"If you take care of me any better I'm not going to have a dick left," he groans.

She laughs at that, right against his neck, and goosebumps ripple down his arm. "That'd be a damn shame."

She lifts up and forward—he would kill, he thinks, to feel her thighs beneath his palms with her muscles working like that—and then down and back, a long, slow, deep motion that she repeats. He watches the sway of her breasts while she works, right up until her teeth pull at his lip, and then her tongue swipes over, cleaning her slick from his mouth before she kisses him again.

She's just slow enough that he lasts, but not slow enough that he's comfortable. There are a dozen things he can usually think of during sex to put release that much further away, but not a single damn one of them is coming to mind now.

She stops halfway down her next stroke and rises back up to stay there, fucking just the head of his cock in steady thrusts. She's not kissing him now, all her attention on holding him down, and he doesn't think that he could break her grip even if he tried.

He doesn't want to try. He's never felt so good in his life, even if staving off orgasm at this point is sheer agony.

She seats herself fully on his cock again, her neck straining as her head tips back. "You have a great cock, has anyone ever told you that?" she asks. "God, you feel so good inside me, James—"

If she keeps talking, he's not going to be able to hang onto that ledge with his last fingernail the way he's been doing. "Don't," he says, the word more of a plea than he means it to be, "I'll come if you keep talking—"

She's riding him harder now, a faster pace than before, each stroke deep. "It's okay," she says, her hands squeezing his, "it's okay. You feel so damn good. You can come. Come on, you've waited so long, you've been so good, come for me—"

If there was a single moment he could have torn out of her hold, it's this one, when his hands flex against hers and he imagines them squeezing around her hips instead, holding her down on his cock while he comes—but she does it for him, sinking him deep and working him through it with shallow, rocking thrusts until he's boneless and empty beneath her.

He's stunned from the force of it, the wave that just washed over and drowned him, but she's already in motion: taking care of the condom, wiping away the stickiness on his skin with a rag. He manages to roll over to face her, but that's as far as he gets before his eyes droop. She reaches out to stroke his hair, over and over, and his eyes shut all the way. He catches a glimpse of the amber glare of a half-set sun, last light above the ocean before it fades.

"Good boy," she murmurs, still petting his hair. "Rest. You've earned it."

It should make him feel like a dog, but the last thought he has before sleep rushes in is that as long as he's _her_ dog, he doesn't mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Face slapping, orgasm denial, oral sex, vaginal sex, praise kink


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

When James wakes up, he's alone in Shepard's massive bed, the sheet and blankets heaped up around him.

His mouth's dry, his head fuzzy. He sits halfway up and looks over at the nightstand; the clock tells him it's just after nine, the dark deep around him, and there's a water bottle sitting there as if it's waiting. He downs the whole thing in one go, breathing hard at the end, and flops back down on the bed to get his bearings.

Goddamn. She's like a hurricane. He can't believe he's still breathing.

Where is she, anyway?

He turns his head toward the open door. There's a light somewhere far down the hall that seems promising. He decides to go investigate as soon as he can get his legs to move.

It only takes a few minutes. He drags himself out from beneath the pile of blankets, finds his boxers and his jeans, and heads off barefoot toward the soft yellow light falling into the hallway. It's coming from her office, a lamp at her desk, and she's sitting with her feet tucked up beneath her in the chair, her long legs bare, a book open in her lap. The baggy t-shirt she's wearing is barely hanging on to one lean shoulder, the light flashing off the lenses of glasses she wasn't wearing earlier.

He clears his throat to announce himself. "Hey. Hope my snoring didn't chase you out of your own bed."

"Didn't hear any snoring," she replies without looking up, but she beckons, and he follows the motion of her hand across the room. "Just didn't want to wake you with the light." She folds down the corner of the page and blinks up at him from behind her glasses, and she shouldn't look so _cute_ after the things she did to him a few hours ago, but she manages it, somehow.

"Nice of you."

Her teeth flash in a sudden grin, and she doesn't look cute anymore. "Not nice. Just…self-centered."

"Really."

"I told you." She unfolds her legs from beneath her in the chair, stretches lazily. Her shirt pulls up, showing the black lace of her underwear, and his eyes fall to her bare stomach and thighs like she probably knew they would. "I like my meat fresh. You needed the recharge."

He's feeling recharged, all right. "My mistake."

She reaches out to cup a hand around his side, just above the waistline of his jeans. Her thumb runs a light pass over his skin. "Checking in," she says. "We still green?"

"We're green."

"Good." She leans back in the chair, letting go of him. "Kneel."

It's these hairpin turns he can't get his head around; just when he thinks he knows what's coming next, she surprises him.

"Don't make me repeat myself," she warns, eyes fixed on his.

He kneels, bristling a little, and it must show on his face, because she chuckles under her breath.

"Harboring some resentment about being told what to do? You liked it a lot earlier."

He did, he remembers; it's just getting back to that space in his head that's sticky, like his brain hasn't cleared the trail well enough yet. He likes all of it—a lot, like she says—but he's never done any of this with anyone before. Fantasies, sure, but there were never any women like her; she wears command like a favorite pair of sweats, comfortable and familiar to her, whether she's on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

It's been a long time, keeping this…what'd she call it? Unconventional thing. It's been a long time keeping this unconventional thing to himself. He's used to faking the conventional thing, so when she looks right through him and tells him to toss it aside, his defenses go up at how transparent she's made him.

"Is it the kneeling?" she asks, faux-sympathetic. "Is it demeaning?"

When she says it like _that_ it is, and it's like Thursday night, the fight, her taunts, the way she said his name like a slur; he liked it better when she was breathing out flattery, her voice practically singing as she praised him, but there's something about being degraded, too. A longing to prove to her that he can be better.

"Answer," she says, looking down at him.

His jaw works. It's a lot of thoughts to condense, so many of them half-formed. "Yes, but…no, at the same time. I've taken orders from you before, without question."

"There were some questions at first," she says, and though her face has smoothed there's a tick of humor in her voice.

"Not once I figured out you knew what you were doing."

"Well, maybe you'll feel better after I've demonstrated my capabilities, then." She folds one leg beneath her and props the other foot on his shoulder—enough weight to notice, but not enough to hurt. "You'll stay as you are until I say otherwise."

Irritation burns in his chest. He doesn't want this, he tells himself; there's nothing arousing about the chill of the room or the unyielding floor or the foot on his shoulder, like he's a piece of furniture for her use.

He looks up at her and she looks back, her mouth curving toward a frown. "The look on your face is not inspiring me to generosity," she says.

He remembers her generosity—the warmth of her mouth, the skilled touch of her hands, the heat of being inside her. He wants _that_.

It's clear he has to earn it.

He settles back toward his heels, shifting his shoulder so that her foot can remain on its perch, and ducks his head. "I'm sorry," he says. It's only a little difficult to force the words past his throat.

"Better." She picks her book up and opens to the marked page. "I'll be with you when I'm done with this chapter."

At first, he imagines ways he could make this position more comfortable, but it proves to be a fruitless enterprise. Maybe if he had a pillow. He doesn't want to shift, anyway, in case she notices and takes offense. There's some peace in accepting the discomfort, so he focuses on that and lets his mind wander to more pleasant things.

Fuck, she was amazing earlier. There's no way he'd be on his knees for her now if it weren't for that. He's never had sex with someone who seemed to know so intuitively what he wanted to hear most, like she'd crawled inside his brain and shone a flashlight around in all his unsavory places. And she seemed to like it, too—a lot, like she got off on giving him what he wanted, even if she didn't _actually_ get off at the end, there. He doesn't think she did, anyway.

He's so preoccupied by processing this that he doesn't notice, at first, that she's moving—tiny motions, hardly noticeable. He only shakes off his thoughts when her foot flexes, calf tightening against his shoulder.

She still has the book in hand, her eyes skating over the page, but the other hand has pushed aside her panties just enough so that she can touch herself.

He should look away, down at the floor, maybe, but he can't help but think that this is for his benefit, that she _knows_ it's what he wants to be doing, so he keeps his eyes fixed on the motion of her circling fingers, shining in the low light with her own slick. Her back arches against the chair, her eyes still on the book's pages, scanning quicker now.

He wants to beg her. God, he wants to beg her to let him touch her, taste her, give her whatever pleasure she wants. He's aching in his jeans but it seems less important than getting his hands on her.

She puts the book down on her desk, facedown to the page she left off on, and takes her glasses off, too. Her fingers work slowly against her cunt; he wonders if she's as much of a masochist to herself as she is to him.

"I may have another use for you." If her own arousal's affecting her, she's hiding it well, her voice still even, only the lightest blush visible on her cheeks and down her neck.

"Please." She's so close that he can smell her, dredging up flashbulb memories from earlier in the night; his hands flex into fists at his sides. "Let me do that."

"Is that what you want?" She doesn't seem opposed, only surprised, as if she expected him to want something else.

"Yes," he tells her; the ache in his knees is forgotten, far away, the chill in the air unnoticeable. "Please, Shepard."

She slides her hand from her panties and holds it out to him, fingers to his lips; he opens his mouth, and she pushes them in. He licks the taste of her thoroughly from her fingers—tracing the ridges of her callouses, flicking at her fingertips—while she watches, her eyes dark.

"You can touch me now," she says once she's reclaimed her hand.

He turns his head, presses an open-mouthed kiss to the ankle still propped on his shoulder. He brings his hand up to wrap around her thigh; when he pulls, she willingly comes closer, until her ass is balanced at the very edge of her chair.

He can't reach much higher than her waist, kneeling as he is. She probably planned it that way, but he doesn't mind, grateful to be allowed to touch any part of her. He strokes a hand down her thigh, and she exhales softly, easing into his touch.

He leaves a line of kisses up the inside of her calf, her knee, her thigh, until he's close enough to hook his fingers around her underwear and pull them down over her legs—and then he hooks her knees over his shoulders and leans down to kiss the core of her, hands holding her thighs open wide.

One hand flutters down to stroke his hair; at the first slow lick across her clit, her fingers tighten. "Ah," she sighs, arching up against his mouth, "right there—"

He gives her just that for a few minutes, slow, because it doesn't seem like she's in any hurry. She undulates against his mouth, her fingers tightening and releasing in his hair, and when he slips one hand down to tease her entrance with just the tip of his finger, she arches against the touch.

"Mmm, your hands," she says as he parts her, opens her, pushes in up to the second knuckle, "were worth the wait," and he crooks his finger against her flesh, once—she squirms—pushes in a little deeper and crooks it again, and this time her back arches, her nails digging into his scalp.

"You're good at that," she says, velvety and warm and just this side of breathless as his finger circles inside her; he adds another finger, and she moans in reaction. "Fuck, you're _so_ good at that—"

God, he doesn't know how she knew, how she _knows_ , but she does; she figured out somehow that listening to this kind of unfiltered praise goes straight to his cock, melts down his spine in a slow wave of heat. He rubs at the spot inside her with his fingers, sucks her clit between his lips, and keeps his free hand wrapped around her thigh when it really wants to be down his jeans, searching for some relief. Her muscles strain beneath his fingers.

"James," she says, and her voice is a tick higher, now, a little breathier, "oh, James, right there, fuck, that's perfect, you're fucking perfect—"

He feels it the instant she comes, her cunt tightening around his fingers, walls pulsing; he wouldn't know otherwise, because she goes quiet, her breath harsh but no other indication of her orgasm at all.

He kisses the freckle on the inside of her thigh, not sure how much longer he'll be allowed to touch her; he wants to make the most of it while he can.

"Fuck, that was so good." Her fingers release his hair and trail down to cup his cheek instead, thumb tracing over the scar across his cheekbone. "You're amazing."

He didn't expect this from her after that fight in the alley. It's bizarre, the warm flattery that comes so easily from the mouth that was taunting him only a few days ago, from the woman who can be and has been hard as stone—but that makes it that much more erotic.

"Up," she says, sliding her legs from his shoulders.

He stands, knees aching.

"Didn't even complain," she praises, reaching out to slip the button on his jeans. "Your knees must be killing you, but you didn't say a thing." Careful, slow, she pulls the zipper down, pushes his jeans down his hips to puddle on the floor. He steps out of them. "I think you've earned something."

This is good news, because his cock is going to fall off if he doesn't do something about it soon.

She nods to the couch. "Boxers off, and make yourself comfortable."

He does as he's told, settling back against the arm of the couch, pillows beneath his back and neck. She gets up—despite the continued lack of underwear, the shirt's big enough to cover her to mid-thigh—and sits opposite him on the couch; there's room enough for both of them.

"Touch yourself."

That's going to make it that much harder to come before she says he can, and she knows it, judging by the look on her face as she watches him take his cock in hand. Just touching himself, for a moment, helps the arousal abate—but then it surges back, fresh as before.

"I expect you to stop if you're about to come," she says, softly, "but get as close as you can."

He gives his cock a slow, loose tug. Her eyes watch the motion from her spot at the end of the couch, greedy.

"Look at you." It's like her voice is dragging up the length of him beneath his hand, her breath on his stretched-tight skin. "Being so good for me. You should see yourself, James, how good you look."

He moves his hand a little faster, chasing down that sensation—he's already going to have to stop soon, hell, that's embarrassing—and moans when she licks her lips, when his fingers pause over the head to give a few harder, rougher strokes, and then the edge is coming toward him and he forces himself to take his hand away.

"Shh. It's okay." She takes one of his feet into her lap and digs her fingers into the arch, which should tickle, but the sensation's faint compared to the blood rushing in his ears. "Deep breath."

He does as she says, his cock beginning to leak onto his belly, and gradually, the sensation eases and others rush in instead: her strong fingers rubbing away at his foot, the soft warmth of her thigh beneath his leg.

When maybe a minute has passed, she says, "Again."

He keeps his touch even lighter than last time. He wonders, a little deliriously, how many times she'll make him do this.

"Fuck, I love watching you." Her touch runs light over his foot now, up his calf, reassuring. "You look so blissed-out. Your hand must feel so good. Felt damn good on me."

He'd started to squeeze harder, hand stroking faster, while she spoke, but now he pulls his hand away again, breathing heavily.

She bends to press a kiss to his knee. "I'm so proud of you. Can't be easy to stop when it feels so good. You're doing so well."

He might as well be touching himself, the way his cock reacts to her voice. He balls his hands into fists at his sides, shaking with the overstimulation. The sensation's started to fade again—which is both a relief, and complete teeth-gnashing anguish—but it's slower to go this time, and it's a few minutes before she says, "Again."

He keeps the pace sedate, his grip firm but not hard. She doesn't just watch his hand, now, but strays to the muscles straining in his stomach, his shoulders, the arch of his neck falling back against the arm of the couch.

"I could watch you do this for hours," she says. "You've got this gorgeous flush all down your chest. I can see your fingers tightening around the head on every stroke. Are you close?"

"Yeah," he says, his leg flexing against her, and he desperately hopes she isn't going to make him stop this time, because if she does—

"Look at me." He does, helplessly, and she says, "Come."

It's almost immediate, as soon as he hears her permission, gives a last pull and spills all over himself, groaning with relief as the orgasm barrels mercilessly over and through him, takes longer to recede than he's used to, and he's limp against the couch afterward, staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

"Perfect," she says softly. "You okay?"

"Nnngg," he manages.

She shifts his leg off her lap; he thinks he feels her stomach muscles tensing, quivering, like she's holding in a laugh. "That good, huh?"

He searches for actual words while she shuffles around looking for something else and comes back with a bottle of water, which she wraps his hand around. He sits up enough to gulp half of it while she wipes up the mess, which he'd tell her that he can take care of, except that his limbs all feel like overcooked noodles.

"Fucking amazing," he decides finally, which is as good as words get when he's so exhausted. He can't believe how much this takes out of him.

"Good," she says, offering him a hand to help him up. "Come on. Bed. That _is_ an order."

He wasn't going to fight her; he doesn't think he's good for anything else right now. He means to ask her if it's always like this—like washing ashore after being caught in a riptide, dehydrated and gasping and so electrified by the near-brush with death that his body can't hold the adrenaline—but as soon as he lays down on her bed, his eyes close, and the next thing he knows, it's morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masturbation, oral sex, fingering, orgasm denial


	5. Chapter 5

Shepard's house—and her view—look even more incredible with pale morning light piercing through the fog. It's a few minutes before James even realizes he's awake; the scene looks like something out of a dream, right down to the fuzzy line of the ocean washing in far below and the faint, unobtrusive snoring from the other side of the bed.

She's on her stomach, one arm wrapped in a death grip around the pillow her head rests on. The sheets are a mess around her—one leg so tied up that he's sure he could dangle her off the edge of the bed and the knot wouldn't give out—and a lock of hair moves with every snore, fluttering in front of her face.

He's already grinning like an idiot, even though his whole body hurts. He doesn't remember the last time he woke up feeling so rested.

She looks like she could use more sleep, so he eases carefully out of bed to keep from waking her, dresses just as quietly, and sidles from the bedroom, pulling the door nearly shut behind him.

He has to try a few doors before he finds the bathroom, but he doesn't think she'd mind. He only catches a glimpse of what looks like a small gym and a room with still more books before he finds it. In the mirror, he sees the shadow of a mark from her teeth peeking out from beneath his t-shirt, right at the crook of his neck. When he touches the mark, the soft sting of contact takes him right back to the night before, her body pressed up against his—

And his stomach growls. Loudly.

Humming now, he finishes up and heads back out into the hallway in search of the kitchen; he thinks he saw it on his way in, the big, open room just past the entryway. It's a long way down the hall, passing another few closed doors on the way. Only her office is open. When he finally gets out to the main room he barely noticed the night before, he has to stop and absorb it for a minute.

No one really knows the circumstances surrounding Shepard's discharge, though right after, the air was thick with rumors. Talk about a payout, some big secret, every higher-up keeping their mouth shut, exactly how it's supposed to be. Only thing everyone knew for sure was that Shepard was done, and wouldn't be coming back. There were even some rumors that she'd died, that it was a big cover-up, blah, blah, blah. The usual crap thrown around by bored soldiers. Everyone had powerful feelings about Shepard, even if they weren't always positive.

He'll give credit to the ones who claimed she got a sizeable check, though, just judging by the house alone. All that glass—she likes her windows—and the location, isolated up on this hill, but the appliances, too, gleaming new stainless steel, granite countertops. It's not perfectly clean or anything; the place looks lived in, a half-empty mug of coffee on the island next to another book with the page dog-eared, dishes from yesterday in the sink, the drying rack half-full. He'd bet she doesn't even have a maid.

He makes a guess on where the pantry is and finds it fully stocked. Somehow he figured her more for takeout than cooking, but he's not complaining. He sets the onions down on the counter—he would kill for this kitchen, the sheer amount of space—and goes rooting in the fridge for a tomato. Once everything's set out, he starts a pot of coffee, looks through his phone for some music to put on low, and gets to chopping.

Having something like this, something simple and familiar to focus on, go through the motions, helps soothe the jittery adrenaline still lingering in his blood. He's practically giddy, but the feeling fades under the rhythmic chopping of onions and tomatoes, giving him some distance, some perspective. He hopes she's not going to take him to task for messing around in her kitchen.

Then again, her taking him to task is actually pretty damn enjoyable.

Grinning, he hums a few lines of the ELO song streaming from his phone's tinny speakers and shimmies over to the stove to get the salsa and beans going. There's time to look for where she keeps the plates while it's warming. Logical place, first spot he reaches for, the cabinet up and to the right of the stove. By the time he's pouring the salsa out into a bowl and cracking eggs into the skillet, he's singing under his breath, fully involved in the ritual of food preparation.

This is how he misses Shepard's entrance into the kitchen until he turns around, two plates of huevas rancheros in his hands, and finds her sitting at one of the barstools with her chin propped on her hand, watching him. He stops singing mid-word.

Her face is always kind of unfathomable—he'd noticed that back during their mission together—but now it's even more so, a smooth wall, unreadable. She's already dressed, baggy sweats and a loose, long-sleeved shirt, her hair still mussed from the pillow, a crease from the sheets pressed into her cheek.

"Eggs?" he offers, hoping she'll let him move right past the dancing-in-her-kitchen thing.

Her head tips a bit sideways, still considering him. "Thanks," she says, her voice rough, and clears her throat. "Coffee?"

She's never been a morning person, he remembers; she's not vacant or spacey, but she knows how to run at peak efficiency with minimal effort, so he won't expect much conversation out of her before she's halfway through her coffee.

"Got you covered," he says, pushing one plate across the island to her and setting down his own.

"Mugs are in the cabinet on your left," she says.

He gets two down—no novelty mugs, not like his mismatched cabinet, just matching white ceramic with geometric black patterns—and pours her mug out first. She gives him a fleeting smile when he sets it down beside her plate and then ducks her head to focus on the food.

He sits, too. Not too close, but within arm's reach. She makes a surprised noise around her first mouthful and eats a little quicker after that. He's always been grateful his abuela made him understand how important knowing how to cook is, but he's a tiny bit more grateful than usual when Shepard clears her plate faster than he clears his own and starts sipping her coffee with a less focused, more relaxed look on her face. He didn't notice last night, or on Thursday, but there are more fine lines decorating the corners of her eyes and mouth than he remembers, and when she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, he sees a few strands of gray.

She can't be thirty-five yet, even, but the non-classified part of her record is enough to age anyone. She wears it well.

It's comfortable, sitting quietly with her, even after the wild night. He kind of thought it would be worse, come sunrise—scarier, with light over-bright on everything they did—but it's easy, warmer than he expected.

And it's over, he remembers. The offer was one night, no strings attached, and the night is over.

It's more disappointing than he thought it'd be.

"Damn, you can cook," Shepard says finally, both hands wrapped around her mug of coffee. "I thought you were just trying to set my house on fire, for a minute."

He looks closer at her, wondering if she's joking. "That happen a lot?"

She snorts. "More than you'd expect." She skates past that, though, and asks, "How are you feeling?"

She looks him over with a critical eye before he even replies, her gaze snagging on the mark just visible at the crook of his neck. He thinks he sees the corner of her mouth twitch.

"Fine," he says, and then, deciding he might as well be honest, "great. You?"

"Pretty damn good," she agrees.

If he doesn't ask now, he'll never get another chance. "How long have you been doing...that?"

She's more forthcoming than he expected—nonchalant, even. "A while. Ten years, maybe, on and off."

"On and off?"

"Well, not everyone likes it, and it's not a requirement. I've had vanilla sex, for the sake of relationships or otherwise, but…" She shrugs one shoulder. "Ultimately, I like this better."

"You usually pick up guys at bars to boss around?" There's a weird, sour feeling in his gut as he says it, something like jealousy—unreasonable, and he knows it, so he squashes it down.

Her lips _do_ quirk at that. "No. You just happened to have good timing."

Well. He clears his throat. "I've never done anything like that before. Thought about it, though."

She gives him an appraising look. "You're good at it. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but I like that."

He drinks a burning gulp of coffee to hide the grin fighting to overcome his face.

She puts down her coffee cup. "I have another offer, if you're interested."

Just like that, his pulse quickens. It's like she has a hardline into his body, knows just what to say to get a reaction. He waits, the points of his fingers tight on his mug, and hopes blindly she's going to put another night on the table.

"I think we're compatible," she says, as casually as she'd suggest burritos for lunch. "We work well together. I'm open to extending this arrangement past one night, if you're interested."

The relief he feels is almost sickening. He could have walked away, he thinks, but it would have been a damn shame.

He forces himself not to blurt out, "I'm interested," as soon as she's done speaking, but it's a close thing. There's the issue of what to say _after_ that, though; if he had questions before, he has dozens now, and he can't pick which one to ask first. "What would that…" He tries to choose a thought to follow and fails spectacularly.

She doesn't mock him, though, just pushes her plate back and swivels sideways on her stool to face him, one elbow braced against the countertop. "I know you're new to this. It's okay. I'm suggesting that we get together and have some creative sex a few times a week. It's not really more complicated than that. Some people like to write out contracts—stuff we will or won't do, that kind of thing—but I'm generally more casual than that. I don't think it's necessary if both of us keep the line of communication open." She catches his eye. "If it makes you feel more comfortable, just let me know."

He shakes his head. "Casual's fine with me." He puts his coffee down, too, and immediately regrets not having something to do with his hands.

"Ground rules are good, though," she says. "Keeps everyone's expectations where they should be. So, first. This would be a relationship, in some ways. It would be false to call it anything else, given the level of intimacy. But I'm not looking for a romantic relationship."

"Fine by me." Considering the way his last romantic relationship went, this is preferable.

"Good. Second, I still need to know your hard limits. Things you absolutely can't or won't do. I've got a list—"

"What, just laying around?"

Her eyes narrow, and he immediately feels as small as he did last night, kneeling at her feet. "Your surprise at my level of preparation borders on insulting. It isn't _laying around_. It's in a locked filing cabinet. Once you fill it out, it'll go back into a locked filing cabinet. Your kinks are safe with me."

"I didn't think they weren't," he says, even though he can feel his neck turning red. "Just never knew someone who kept a list of kinks around."

"You probably have," she says. "Just didn't know it. You'll check off what you like, make note of what you won't do, and then I'll have a guideline for our time together."

"You got a list of your own?"

She smirks. "Sure, but I'm not sharing." Seeing him about to argue, she adds, "It's part of the power dynamic. Trust me, I won't do something I don't like just because you like it. If it's a hard limit for either of us, we won't do it. Simple."

"Seems unfair," he grouches. "You get to know what makes me tick, but not the other way around?"

"You'll learn," she says, unconcerned. "Besides—this makes it easier to fulfill my role. You get off on being told what to do. If you knew all my kinks, or even some of them, you'd try to put my needs first, undermine my authority to give me what you think I want. When you're with me, you shouldn't be worrying about that. I will tell you what I want. It takes the responsibility off your very nice shoulders, which, given how last night went, you like. Understand?"

His face is burning now, too, but he doesn't see a fault with her logic, so he doesn't argue it further. "Understood."

"A few other things." She's in full mission mode now, matter-of-fact, fingers drumming on the countertop. "While we're doing this, I require your full attention. No side flings, no other relationships like this one."

"Done." He doesn't think he'd have the energy for someone else, even if he wanted to—and he doesn't.

"Condoms," she goes on. "Do you like them or feel more comfortable with them? If not wearing them was an option, would you prefer it? You'd need to get tested, and I will too, trade the paperwork, etcetera."

"I'd be fine not using them," he says. "Your end covered?"

"Had an injury that makes it highly unlikely, if not impossible, for me to get pregnant, and I've got an IUD just in case." Maybe she sees the worry developing on his face, because she adds, "Relax. I've never wanted kids. It was a convenient injury for me, if there is such a thing."

He moves on. "I'll get tested."

"Last thing. Either of us can call this off at any time, for any reason. Obviously I'd prefer that if there's a small issue we discuss it, figure out a solution, and move forward, but some differences are irreconcilable."

It all sounds so neat, easy, straight-forward, the way she's laid it out for him, as if handing him every secret fantasy he's ever had is simple as this, packaged up in something that looks a lot like a mission brief. "Got it."

She considers him. "Anything you want to talk about now?"

It was the same when he was shadowing her: she said her piece, then gave him a window to say his. He always appreciated it back then, and he appreciates it now, even if he can't think of a single thing to say that she hasn't covered.

"Think about it," she says, understanding his silence. "I value honesty. If there's something you want, I want to help you with it."

He nods. "I will."

"Good." She picks her coffee mug back up and takes a sip. "So. When are you free next?"

He goes over his work shifts in his head. "Saturday."

"Six again, then, and I'll feed you this time." She glances sideways at him. "Until then, the rule is still in effect. You don't come until I say, and I say you're going to wait until Saturday."

His mouth pops open in outrage. "Are you _seriously_ —"

"Be good," she warns. "A few days is nothing. I can make it longer."

He closes his mouth, a little mulishly, but concedes that she could make it worse, and besides—so far, she hasn't steered him wrong. What's a few days?

It's only when he's driving home, checklist dropped on the passenger seat, that the surreal fog starts to lift from his brain, letting him think again.

He didn't ask why she's in San Diego, or why she was so pissed off on Thursday, or even what she's getting out of this; he thinks the last question might be the only one she'd answer, so for now, he shelves the first two and resolves to ask the third.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're diggin' this, feel free to subscribe, kudos, or holler incoherently in the comments box below. I'd love to hear from you!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

Work is, at least, a good distraction.

There's just no way he can't be absolutely, one hundred percent present at the club. If he's dancing and not paying attention, he'll end up on his ass, which the girls are sort of forgiving about—when he was new and a little clumsy, they giggled and cooed over every fall and forgave him as long as he crawled around the edge of the stage for a closer look—but his boss is _not_. If he's talking to a client, they can tell when he's not all there, and there goes his revenue for the night. At this job, just like being on duty, it's easy for everything else to fade to the background.

He clocks out at two in the morning with $350—not bad, for a Wednesday. He stuffs the cash in his pocket, heaves his duffel bag over his shoulder, and turns to go, but Jack's blocking the way. She points at the mark in the crook of his neck.

"It was covered while I was on stage, boss," he says, adjusting the duffel. She's sort of a nightmare, Jack—her hair-trigger temper is legendary—but she takes the health and safety of her people seriously. It's worth her sharp tongue. And terrifying vocal cords.

"Would've pointed it out sooner if it wasn't. Make sure it stays that way, Vega. The girls don't want to think about the girls that don't have to _pay_ for your attention."

"You got it."

She scowls at him, but he knows her well enough by now; if she was really pissed, he'd know. She turns and stalks off, probably to bark at somebody else—dancer, security, bartender, she's not picky. Despite all that, though, everyone's happy at Jack's. The club's clean, the clientele's respectable, security's tight, and no one gets cheated out of their pay. It's enough for him to pay his bills and put a hell of a lot away.

For what, he doesn't know. His abuela's been on him to go back to school, but he's not really interested. Only thing he's ever really been good at is war.

Doesn't mean he wants to go back, though.

He walks back to his apartment in the brisk ocean air. He's put off thinking about Shepard as long as he can. The mark on his neck is just one reminder; there's that list, too, sitting on his kitchen table, waiting for him to get home. He didn't dare look at it before work, but now there's a combined knot of dread and anticipation sitting in his stomach. He picks up the pace a little, curiosity burning.

The screen door sticks, like always, but one hard tug wrenches it free. It's old, and kind of run down, but he likes the duplex, anyway. The landlord lives downstairs, an older woman with a soft spot for servicemen. He's sure she gave him a discount on the rent; there was nothing going for this price for blocks around.

He tosses his keys on the table, glances at the folded sheets of paper sitting in the middle, and goes to root around in his fridge for some food first. There's some leftover casserole that he slides out of the container, onto a plate, and into the microwave before he turns around and considers the list again.

The night before—this morning—already feels far away, like something that happened to some other James Vega, not the same guy who gets lunch with Cortez every Friday and fixes brunch for his abuela on Sunday and works the days and nights in between. His routine's been set for a year now, and Shepard punches her way in and moves everything around, just like that.

Makes him feel like he's been sleepwalking, actually, this whole time. He didn't even know how entrenched he was until she uprooted him

He sits down with a beer and his casserole, pulls the list toward him, and opens it up.

For a few minutes, he forgets to eat. The damn thing's just like her, matter-of-fact, clinical, even when it's describing the most depraved shit. And other stuff he's going to have to look up, long-ass words he's never seen before.

He's in so far over his head.

He puts the list down and digs into the casserole instead, because this, at least, he understands. For a few minutes, he chews and drinks while the refrigerator hums quietly behind him, the night steadily deepening, until the casserole's gone and he's feeling a little braver with half a beer in his stomach.

He moves over to the couch with the rest of the beer and opens the list again, this time with a pen in hand. There's a whole section just devoted to different kinds of role playing; none of them really interest him, but there's a few that aren't hard limits, if she really wanted him to participate. She's included a helpful rating system, where 1 is _turn-on, want to do_ and 5 is _hard limit, turn-off_.

He wonders if she pulled this list off the internet or if she's curated it over time. Ten years. He thought he got around—and he does, definitely—but the stuff he's been doing is nothing like what she's done. Maybe he's thought about it, maybe he's got porn stashed away somewhere, but he feels inexperienced compared to her, which is new. How many of these things has she done with other people? All of them?

Everything's broken down into the sum of its parts. He thinks of sex as just that—sex—but she thinks of it as all these building blocks, stacking into one another to create an experience. _Licking_ is on here, for fuck's sake, with a subgroup of specific body parts.

That reminds him of the heat of her mouth, though, the lips pressed to his neck, his chest. The night before doesn't feel far away anymore, the details too clear in his head. It's only Wednesday night—well, very early Thursday morning—and he still has three days to get through, but his dick just focuses on _hair pulling_ and he thinks about how it would feel if she could actually get a good grip in his hair, if it wasn't so short, and _tug_ —

His phone buzzes against the kitchen table, loud in the silence, and he nearly falls off the couch. Grumbling, he heaves himself up.

Shepard, two words: _You awake?_

He glances at the clock. It's almost three in the morning. He knows why _he_ is awake, but why is _she_ keeping these horrible hours?

_Short and sweet_ , he decides, and texts back, _Yep._

By the time he gets back to the couch, she's replied. _Good. Incoming_.

His phone buzzes again, and he picks up. "Hey."

"Hi." Her voice gets this warm, husky pull to it late at night or early in the morning; he doesn't remember that from before, but he's starting to think he didn't notice damn near anything, those months they spent together years ago. Nothing really interesting, anyway.

"What's up?" There's a vague hope buried somewhere in his gut that she's going to lift the rule for the sake of phone sex, but he seriously doubts it.

"Have you gone through the list yet?" It's almost drowsy, like she's half asleep, and imagining her curled up beneath her sheets, phone pressed to her ear, her shoulders bare, is not helping with the situation in his pants.

"Started to."

"Got a number for 57?"

He flips the page over. _Phone sex._ That hopeful feeling starts to seem a little more realistic. "One," he says.

"How about 79?"

He scans down. His stomach drops. _Being praised._ "One," he says, his voice hoarser than before, and she _chuckles_ , and it feels like she's right there, her lips at his ear, her voice reaching deep into him and pulling.

"Good." He hears the rustle of sheets, her body shifting around. "Get comfortable."

His palms are sweating. "What about the rule?"

"Oh, the rule's still on," she says, amused. "No one said you couldn't masturbate, though."

He shuts his mouth, hard, to keep from swearing at her. He's going to be a wreck by Saturday, if he makes it there at all.

* * *

She can hear the frustration in his silence, bordering on agony, but she knows he can handle it.

It's a lot to ask, of someone new to this, but it's okay if he slips up, makes mistakes. That's part of the fun—being part of it while he learns, seeing him improve, like that old swell of pride she used to get in her chest when one of her recruits made it big and turned around to thank her, realizing that the whip she drove the lot of them with was for their benefit.

Been a long time since she felt that, and it's not quite the same, but. Close enough.

"You've got this," she soothes, shifting until she's comfortable, left hand keeping the phone at her ear, right hand tracing idle patterns over her stomach. "Just like last night—a little longer, with more breaks, but it's the same concept. You were so good. I know you can do this."

She gets a vocalization for that, halfway between a grumble and a whimper in his throat. God, he makes _fantastic_ sounds, all these bitten-off little things that really escalate when he loses control. Her hand strays lower, fingers stroking over the short hair between her open thighs.

"You're not gonna deprive me of a cold shower after, right?" he asks, and she huffs a laugh. There's something extra rewarding about being with someone who hasn't done this before; he talks back more than most of her past liaisons, not as obedient, unwilling to suffer in silence.

"No," she says, "but if you don't stop complaining, I can make this worse."

He doesn't say anything to that, just a deep breath that he lets out again, slow. She can see it in her mind's eye, his chest rising and falling, his shoulders shuddering at the end.

"I'm in bed," she tells him, squirming a little deeper under the covers. "Where are you?"

"Couch," he says, and the sound of a body moving against fabric.

"Like last night, then," she says, slyly, and there's a hitch in his breathing that says he remembers. "Did you like that?"

" _Yes_ ," he groans.

"Good. Touch yourself. Go slow."

She knows when he's done it by the sound he makes, both relieved and pained, and she slips her middle finger into her own heat, closing her eyes. She can still see him, his back arching, his gaze fixed greedily on her while his hand stroked his cock, fingers that had just been inside her. She circles her clit, not quite touching, and remembers the tension in the leg braced beside her, the flex of his muscles as he approached climax.

"I've been thinking about my favorite part of last night," she says, lowering her voice. "Do you want to hear it?"

"Yes," he says again, but it sounds like _no_ , the way his voice begs her to put him out of his misery. Too bad she likes his misery.

"The way you looked when I was fucking you," she says, and his breath catches, rasping, in his throat. "You were perfect. Bet your fingers were killing you, from how tight you were hanging on to those sheets, but you couldn't even loosen your grip. What were you thinking about, James?"

"How much I wanted to touch you." The words come out ragged, like the truth's being dragged from him.

She chuckles and places the points of two fingers over her clit, stroking slowly. "Where?"

"Your thighs." She wishes she could see the hand squeezing his cock, the line of his jaw as his head tips back against the arm of the couch. "Wanted to feel you move."

"Was that your favorite part?" she asks, working to keep her voice even. "Touching me?"

"Yes," he breathes, so fervently that the arousal tugs unexpectedly deep in her belly and she stills her hand, pulling the phone away from her mouth so he won't hear the change in her breathing.

"Tell me," she orders, her heels digging into the mattress. "Tell me what you liked."

"Tasting you. Your legs wrapped around my shoulders, your muscles bunching under my hands, and you were so wet, so hot around my fingers—"

She can hear his voice pitching lower, the edge approaching, and presses her fingers hard to her center. "Are you close?" she asks him.

"Yes." He's fighting for air, the syllable breathless. "Shepard, please—"

"Stop," she says curtly.

She knows he does because of the sound he makes, the pained groan, almost a cry, and makes sure he hears her when she comes, her voice a long, wordless moan.

It only takes a few seconds to find her composure again, even with the pleasure still twitching in her nerve endings. "I won't make you do it again tonight," she says. "You're free to take that cold shower."

"That sounds horrible," he says, with feeling. "Think I'll just go to bed."

"Sleep well, then," she says, her mouth curving into a smile. "But not _too_ well. It still counts if you come in your sleep."

"You're terrible." There's nothing insulting about it, either, just something like admiration.

"Very observant," she agrees. "Good night."

They hang up, and for a moment, her eyes still closed and her limbs spread out and loose, she thinks she'll actually fall asleep—

But a moment passes, and another, and her wakefulness creeps back in until she's sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed.

Not that easy. Never that easy.

She feels almost stupid for having tried. Nightmares have never been driven away by a lover's company before; why should this time be any different? It's good while it lasts, always, but then the burning, heated pump of her heart sneaks back in and her satisfaction turns to dust—to anger, the kind that's not so easy to control. To fear.

She flexes her toes against the cold hardwood floor. There was a time, thirty-three whole years, that she looks back on now and thinks, _I never knew fear_ , that the little uptick in her pulse at the first sound of gunfire was more like excitement, like bloodlust. Maybe the universe is bringing things back into balance, repaying her for all those times she was above it instead of beneath it like she should have been.

She paces to the kitchen, gets down the bottle of whiskey, and pours herself out a measure. Then she crosses the room to the windows overlooking the city, the ocean, and stares down into the lights.

This is a bad idea. She left that life—and everyone in it—behind for a reason. Liara's probably ferreted her out by now, but as long as she ignores any attempt at contact, no one's going to disrespect her very clear wishes by breaking down her door, so it isn't so much that she thinks Vega would blab. No, it's that if Liara does her job right—and she does, she _always_ does—she'll know that Shepard is tolerating him, so why wouldn't she tolerate others?

There's an old dead phone in a drawer somewhere in this house with hundreds of texts, dozens of voicemails, a handful of people who could exploit this opportunity. _Could_ , she thinks, and tries to decide if they _would_.

They won't act quickly. They know better. They'll sit back, and if they're watching, they'll wait. They won't want to screw it up. They'll want to go carefully.

This thing with Vega won't last forever. That's when they'll try, she decides, when it seems like she might be lonely, vulnerable. When the way in could be easier.

Maybe it's a bad idea, but it's already been executed, and she has an exit strategy. She doesn't have any real attachment to this place. She can sell the house, set up again somewhere else, send the message loud and clear that she doesn't want visitors. If they cross that line, she'll deal with it then.

In the meantime, though. She takes a burning gulp of whiskey. In the meantime, she'll enjoy herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phone sex, orgasm denial


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

It's called edging, and Shepard seems determined to repeat the experience ad nauseam until Saturday.

James hits the gym harder than usual on Thursday morning to burn off his frustration, and it carries him through work, at least. He allows himself to be lulled into a false sense of security when it's three in the morning and she hasn't called, but then at ten past his phone rings, and she tells him to edge _twice_.

He doesn't pass on the cold shower this time. He doesn't think he'll be able to sleep, otherwise.

He's distracted at lunch on Friday. Cortez has to repeat himself twice before James realizes he's expecting a response.

"What's up with you?" Cortez asks, frowning.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he has to clench his hands together under the table to keep from tearing it out and reading her directions or throwing it at the wall; at this point, he can't decide which has more appeal.

"Just tired," he says, trying to brush it off. "Late shift last night. Sorry, man." His phone continues to sit like a live grenade in his pocket, but he refocuses on the conversation, hanging onto every word for dear life.

And Friday night. Friday night, he fails.

They've graduated to Skype, and maybe it's being able to look at her—the stiff, pink peaks of her breasts, the warm lamplight washing over her skin, the dark heat of her eyes hidden in shadow—that does it, or maybe it's just that she's making him edge three times and he's already so wound up, but whatever it is, he takes his hand away when it's already too late and comes all over himself with a long groan.

The relief lasts about two seconds after the orgasm, though, because the silence in the wake of it, punctuated only by his harsh breathing, tells him exactly how much trouble he's in.

When he dares to look back at the screen, the camera's moved, hiding her body from his view. "Did I say you could come?" she says, every word clipped.

"No—I'm sorry, I just couldn't—"

"You'll have to do better than that," she says. "Oh, James, what am I going to do with you?"

She ponders her own question for a moment. Contrary to the pleasure of a minute before, he feels only dread now.

"Send me your list by noon," she decides. "I want to think carefully about how I'll handle you tomorrow. You will not touch yourself again until then." Her eyes flick up, and though it's only a trick of the camera, it feels as if she's there, staring down at him. "Can you behave yourself?"

"Yes," he says, a little sullenly.

"We'll see," she says, and cuts the call.

He lays there on the couch for a minute, just getting his breath back, and tries to wrestle down his undulating emotions. The physical relief after the last few days of being relentlessly wound up isn't as good as it should be, not now that he's contemplating Shepard's retribution.

But at the same time…he gets up, turns on the shower, steps in while it's still cold. He's curious. It's morbid, maybe, but until now, he hasn't done anything out of line enough for her to really punish. He wonders what constitutes _punishment_ for her. If he'll be able to endure it.

The water warms slowly, and he stands with his head under the spray, eyes closed, wishing he could skip the anticipation and get right to six o'clock tomorrow, find out what exactly she has planned. He was always better at that—leaping in feet-first, reacting instead of waiting. She knows it's a weakness of his. She probably set this up, expecting him to fail, and then to have to sit and wait for the result, driving himself around in circles in the meantime.

She's got him on the hook, and she knows it, and she's enjoying watching him wriggle.

That should piss him off, and it does a little, but he also doesn't fault her, exactly. He can't deny how much he got out of Tuesday night, and this is just another part of it. A step in the process. He can work with that.

He'd better be ready to grovel, though, pissed off or not. He's got a feeling she won't be quick to forgive, and if he wants the night to end happily tomorrow, he's going to have to swallow his pride.

* * *

He sends the full list off to her at noon, and two hours later, when he gets back from the gym, there's a text from her.

_Plan to stay for an hour after we're done, or overnight again, if you're comfortable with it. We're going to be a little more intense this time, and on the slim chance that you get hit with an endorphin crash after, I don't want you to be alone. I'd prefer this to be the standard for all future encounters, too._

It's kind of a relief, even though he doesn't usually get so cozy with girls so quick. He was tanked on Tuesday night; driving home would have been a chore too many. It's different with Shepard, anyway. Neither of them are misinterpreting staying over as wanting anything more. This is convenience, not romance.

He has four hours to kill, so he ends up cleaning his kitchen while a few episodes of a comedy he's watched a dozen times plays in the background. There's a ritual to it, soothing and familiar, dialogue he knows almost by heart and the spot on the counter that always requires the most scrubbing. He puts himself into it and, when he's done, it's that much more satisfying to take a long, hot shower.

The afternoon passes slowly, but finally, he's packing a backpack with an old t-shirt, sweats, and a toothbrush, his nerves humming.

He still doesn't know exactly what to expect. There are dozens of things on that list that she could use or ignore, and he won't know until she decides to try one. He can't believe how much it turns him on, having that control taken from him, her choices superseding his.

He has to work to look calm when he knocks on her door. Maybe he should look apologetic, given how the night before went, but he doesn't think he could pull it off right this second. He's too damn excited.

She opens the door, steps back, and he walks in, toeing off his shoes. She shuts the door behind him, and he darts a look at her. Another pair of jeans, another tank top, her arms folded beneath her breasts. He's at least ninety percent sure she isn't wearing a bra.

"Follow up question to your list," she says, without so much as a hello. "Is there a way to still indulge in marking if we confine it to an area that will always be covered by clothes?"

Figures she'd pick that out. He'd given marking a 1, but he'd written in that they're hard to hide, and preferred it to be a once-in-a-while thing.

"Hard to hide marks in my line of work," he hedges. He doesn't keep his job a secret, but he's also not sure he wants to tell her about it. "I'm fine covering them up—just not all the time, if you want to make my life easier."

Her eyes narrow. "Do you regularly take all your clothes off in front of your coworkers?"

He rubs the back of his neck. "Uh, yeah. And…other people?"

For a long moment, she stares at him, her head cocked a bit to the side.

"Do you have a fun stage name?" she asks finally, and her face is still as stone, but he can hear the tiniest bit of strain in her voice, like she might be about to laugh.

"The funniest." He snaps off a salute. "Major Dick, at your service."

She covers her mouth with her hand, but he still catches just a glimpse of her grin before it's hidden again. "Oh my god," she says, muffled. "Do they _like_ that?"

"Judging by last night's tips, yeah," he says, grinning too.

Most of the anxiety melts away. She doesn't ask anything further. "Leave that here," she says, pointing to the backpack. "The living room's right through there. I want you to go in, strip, and wait."

"Yes, ma'am."

One eyebrow arches. "Maybe you'll be able to atone for your mistake, after all." She makes a shooing motion with her hand, and he goes, following her directions.

The room he steps into is separated from the kitchen only by half a wall, and the wall itself has plenty of cutouts with books piled into the crevices. There are a few low sofas, a glass coffee table, and—

He swallows. The rope carefully coiled up on the coffee table is the brightest thing in the room: a sunny, vivid blue, it stands out beside the shades of white and black, the sparkling transparency of the glass, the geometric gray patterns in the rug. There's a lot of it, neatly organized, and it feels as if it's already squeezing tight around his chest.

He hurries to take off his clothes before she comes in and finds him standing there, his mouth gaping open. There's a level of exposure that presses down on him when he's done, clothes neatly folded on a corner of the coffee table; even though it's just the two of them up here, the massive windows and vaulted ceilings make him feel as if he's under a spotlight with an audience watching.

He almost misses the sound of her coming in, her feet near-silent even against the hardwood floor. The brief mirth is gone from her face, replaced by the hard eyes and set jaw that stared through the camera at him last night, disapproving.

"It seems as if there's been a misunderstanding," she says, her voice as unyielding as her posture. "Who decides when you come?"

He ducks his head, the blood already rushing to his face, his stomach twisting. On top of the exposure, there's the humiliation of being reprimanded like a child. It digs at him. "You do," he says, as clearly as he can, and almost chokes on the words.

"Are you sure?" Her voice is like ice. He tries not to shiver, but he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up, anyway. He knows exactly how lethal she is, and he never thought he'd be on the receiving end of that tone. She crosses the room and takes his chin in her fingers, forcing him to look at her. "It didn't seem so clear to you last night."

"I'm sorry," he forces out, even though his pride begs him not to do it, and then, to add insult to injury, he grovels: "I'll do better."

"You'll have to," she agrees, grimly, and lets him go to pick up the rope instead. "Stand still. Face away from me, and hands behind your back."

She adjusts his arms to rest across his back the way she wants, the inside of each wrist pressed to the opposite forearm, and then the cool slither of rope touches his skin. She wraps around, just above each wrist, and he slowly becomes aware of his heartbeat, still steady but loud. If she listens hard enough, he'd bet she could hear it.

He's afraid—not terrified, not even close, but just a touch of fear, making it a fight for him to stand still as she works in steady silence around his arms, around his chest. It's tight enough for him to feel, but not tight enough to keep him from breathing—just tight enough to hold him in place.

He thinks about the control she'll have over him, when this is tied off. She won't have to hold him down, won't have to rely on him to obey any orders; no matter how much he might want to, he won't be able to touch her, or himself.

It's insulting. She might as well say that she doesn't trust him to control himself, and maybe she'd be right, after last night. That smarts, too, that she's insulting him and she's got a right to it.

But it's freeing, too, a relief that he won't be able to screw up again, that he'll be at her mercy. She could do a lot of things to him while he's tied up like this, and they're not all bad, if he behaves.

She wraps a hand around a knot that he can feel against his spine and presses it into his back. "Move," she orders.

He follows the pressure of her hand to a cleared space on the hardwood floor.

"Kneel," she says, taking her hand away.

Without his arms, it's hard to balance, but he goes slow and makes it there, his knees pressing into the floor. He bites off a complaint, shifting until he finds a bearable position.

"I'd like you to take this time to think about why it's important for you to follow instructions." She's still behind him, so he has no warning when her hands drop a length of silk over his eyes, blinding him. She ties it off in the back, but her touch doesn't linger. "Think hard. I'll be back in a while." She taps his shoulder. "Remember your safeword. I'll be able to hear you, even if you can't hear me."

He's about to ask what she means when she carefully slides earplugs into his ears. He'd thought it was quiet before—the house well-insulated, the sound of their breathing minimal—but this silence is deeper. There's a moment of panic as he feels the full weight of how effectively he's bound, blind, deaf, helpless, and his chest fills with a harsh breath, his heart skipping to a faster tempo.

He can't hear, but he can feel: the quiet thud of her footsteps pacing away from him, settling at some point ten feet or so away. He lets the breath out, slowly as he can, reassured by her nearness. He's sure she's settled on one of the sofas, but her foot still taps against the floor, sending the reverberation to him. It's not steady, only intermittent, but it's enough to ground him, keep him from floating away on a wave of panic.

He shifts his knees a little wider, settles further back on his heels. It hurts, at first. He's in good shape—he couldn't handle the gym and a six-hour shift at the club in the same day if he wasn't—but this is a new kind of pain. A slow-burning, growing ache, his arms bound to his sides and behind his back, the rope snug against his skin, the hardwood rigid beneath his knees. He wishes he had a pillow.

And then, after a while, the aches stop growing and settle into something manageable instead. It anchors him, in the same way the occasional reverberation of Shepard's foot anchors him. He stops thinking about how uncomfortable he is and starts thinking about what she asked him to think about, instead.

Following instructions. It's not something he's a stranger to. Everyone starts somewhere in the Alliance, Shepard included, and it's always at the bottom. He's had his fair share of officers who just wanted to belittle him, whose direction was for their benefit and not his—to humiliate him, or just to prove their own power.

That was what was different about Shepard, when he worked with her. She drove him as hard as anyone else had—harder—but he came out of it better. He wouldn't have made it as an N7 if it weren't for her.

This isn't that, but it's not totally different. What did she say on Wednesday? That she was fulfilling a role. He'd meant to ask her what she got out of all this, but now the opportunity's gone and he thinks he's supposed to figure it out, instead.

She gets off on telling him what to do, but it's not just that. _If there's something you want_ , she'd said on Wednesday morning, totally sincere, _I want to help you get it._

If she wasn't directing him, he'd be going in circles, trying to do what he thinks is best. He's been doing that for years. Been the guy everyone expected him to be—played the field, the master of the one-night stand, the uncontrollable flirt, the guy every girl could come to if she wanted a good time and nothing else. At first, he'd thought he liked it, that reputation, making a girl feel wanted, being in control, but he got sick of it, faster than he wanted to admit to himself. Started turning girls down, tried to keep a long-term relationship, still pulled the same shit. Protect her, defend her, don't let her see what's eating at you, let her go when she gets sick of your deflections.

Shepard doesn't need protecting. He almost laughs just imagining it. She has a different role. _I'm going to take care of you_ , she'd said, flexing her hips against him, _I promise_. It's not meant to belittle, like he can't take care of himself; it's an offer, acknowledging there's a different direction, and she knows the way if he wants to follow.

If he doesn't follow her instructions when he's already said he would, it comes off like he doesn't respect her judgment. Like he thinks she's not capable of doing her job.

His stomach sinks. No wonder she's so pissed.

But he gets it, at least, and he'll do better, and it's easier to believe that he'll follow through now that he understands. The minutes drift hazily by, and he stops thinking, fixes instead on the intermittent reverberation of her foot, on the pattern of his breathing.

He's not sure how much time passes before he feels her stand, her footsteps coming back to him. With the barest brush of her fingers, she removes the ear plugs.

"How are we doing?" she asks, her voice not as hard as before.

"Green," he says, without hesitation.

"Tell me what you were thinking about."

He still can't see her. He wishes he could, wishes he could look up into her face so that she'd know exactly how sorry he is, but he'll have to work with what she's giving him. "Respect," he says, debating every word, trying to get it just right. "And how I disrespected you last night."

Her hand comes to rest on his hair. Just that gentle touch—unmoving, but a soft weight nonetheless—is enough to startle his body out of the heavy, resting state it's fallen into; his heart picks up, a faint tapping against his ribs.

She's waiting, so he licks his lips and goes on. "You offered me…good things, as long as I could hand over some control to you. And you proved you could follow through on Tuesday. You held up your end of the deal. When I couldn't—didn't—do the same, it was an insult to your authority. Disrespectful, given that you've given me every reason to respect you. I'm sorry," he says, again, because the apology is more genuine this time, not an attempt to deflect or slither out of trouble.

She strokes his hair, once, with her hand. He doesn't have the mobility to push up into her touch the way he wants.

"You _were_ thinking," she says, and the approval in her voice washes away the needling pain still prickling at him, all over him, from the time spent kneeling. Her hand drops to his cheek, fingers stroking his skin, leaving the sensation of something wet on his face, and then, just as he wonders what it is, he smells _her_.

The tap of her foot, reverberating through the floorboards to him, takes on a different meaning now. It could have been her heel, braced against the floor, her legs spread wide, her fingers working between her thighs—

"Yes," he says helplessly.

"I've distracted you, haven't I?" She doesn't sound angry, only amused. "Do you think you deserve a taste?"

He has to force his brain to work; it feels like she's bogged it down with a serious quantity of mud. "You get to decide what I deserve."

"I like that." The pads of her fingers press to his lips, and he opens for her, tongue pressing quick to her skin. "Suck."

He does, cleaning the slick, musky taste of her from her fingers, tongue running over and over her flesh. She pulls them slowly from his mouth.

"I think you've earned a pillow," she says, and paces away from him. He turns toward the sound of her footsteps, blindly following her path; she returns quickly, dropping the pillow to the floor directly in front of him. "Come forward a bit. I won't let you lose your balance."

Awkwardly, he walks forward on his knees, edging onto the thick pillow. It's a relief; the ache of supporting himself in one position for so long, with the ropes on top of it, is bearable, but the extra pain of the floor on his joints is starting to distract him. He lets out a low sigh as she moves to stand behind him again.

"That's better," she agrees, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders.

He twitches beneath her touch; without his eyes, it's harder to predict what she's about to do. Her thumbs stroke over his skin, a soft, repetitive motion.

"Your favorite part of Tuesday was touching me," she says, as though speculating out loud to herself, her hands slowly working up his neck now, the same feathery touch. Goosebumps erupt over his arms; her nails scratch through the hair at the nape of his neck, the strip where it's a little bit longer. "I think you understand where you went wrong last night, but I want to make sure the lesson sticks. The ropes will help. You will not touch me tonight."

He lets his head drop forward, his eyes rolling shut, as her fingers stroke further up his scalp, through his hair. "Understood," he manages, barely holding onto the message her words carried, because the steady touch of her hand in his hair seems to reverberate down his spine until it pools in his gut. His breathing's picking up, no matter how hard he tries to control it.

She skips over the band of the blindfold, one hand petting over his hair, the other still resting at the base of his neck, unmoving. The ache of kneeling is almost unnoticeable now beneath the arousal pulling at him, his cock twitching between his legs, reacting to the short-cropped nails repeatedly running over his scalp until her fingers take over again, caressing his hair.

"If you're good," she says, her hand sliding up the base of his neck, fingers light over his throat, "I might take the blindfold off."

He realizes that he has no idea if she's still wearing clothes—she hasn't stepped close enough for him to feel the softness of her skin or the absence of it, her body carefully apart from his—but the idea that maybe she isn't, that she's bare behind him, lit up by the late afternoon sunlight, finishes the job on his cock. He's panting now, trying not to writhe against her touch, even when she runs her fingers down the front of his throat, dipping into the gap in his collarbone where his pulse beats against her hand.

Her other hand drops from his hair—he cuts off a whine in his throat, trying to hold still—and she moves around in front of him, fingers trailing over his chest. "Damn, you look good in rope," she sighs. "I could keep you tied up like this all week."

"I wouldn't complain."

The stinging slap to his cheek has just enough of an edge to hurt, but he thinks he knows the difference between this and the way she hit him for calling her _Lola_. This is still playful, and her hand cups his cheek after, thumb running over his bottom lip. The scent of her is still all over her fingers, but he doesn't flick his tongue out to taste her; she'd probably slap him harder for that.

"Smart mouth," she says. "Be careful. You would thank me."

He would, he thinks, almost deliriously; he would thank her from his knees, as often and loudly as she'd let him.

Her hands drift to his shoulders again, the width of them stroking over his skin, following the bulk of his muscles. She pauses to trace over the entire pattern of his tattoos with just one fingertip, from his neck down his shoulder down his arm, and by the time she reaches the end of the intersecting lines on his bicep, his breath is harsh, loud in his ears. It's enough to drown out the sound of her fingers rasping against his skin, beginning all over again at the bottom of the tattoo.

He never imagined that just a repetitive touch could do this to him, but Shepard plays his body with the barest contact and it responds, the heat of wanting her burning in his veins.

She runs her hands over his chest, just above the first line of rope. She uses the flat of her palms, her fingers just skimming his shoulders, sliding out and then back. It feels like an hour's passed, just her touching him, riling him up. The pressure of her fingers is gentle, but the repetitive motion is leaving him ragged, oversensitive, shivering—

Her hand drops to his nipple and pinches, and he groans from surprise and pain as much as the jolt of pleasure it gives him, arching against her fingers. She smoothes her thumb over him, around him, fingers splaying out to stroke his chest between the ropes.

"Look at you, on your best behavior," she says, her voice low, but with one of his senses blacked out it feels like she's speaking right against his ear. "Not unsatisfied with the slow pace, are you? Seems like you're enjoying it."

He doesn't know; he craves the heady rush of her touching him, the attention paid to every inch of his body as she slowly works her way down, but the sensation's overwhelming, his nerves fried.

She gives his cheek a light slap, just to get his attention. "Answer."

"It's good," he forces out, and she smoothes over his stubble, hand stroking the sensitive skin just beneath his jaw. "God, Shepard, it's so good—"

"That's right." Her hand slides lower, over his stomach, deftly avoids his cock, pets the trimmed trail of hair instead, the scratch of her nails occasionally interrupting. He jolts at every unexpected graze. "You're doing so good for me. Up."

Her hands vanish; disoriented, he works to get one foot beneath him and then the other, pushing up. Her hand comes to rest on the knot above his hands, still bound behind his back; she pushes lightly and directs him forward. He follows the pressure of her hand until she turns him to face her again, and then she presses down on his shoulder instead, directing him to sit.

He lands on the softness of the couch with a groan, slumping back against the overstuffed cushions.

"How are the legs?"

He tries to take stock, his head buzzing too loudly with the ache of his cock to assess the state of his body. "A little sore."

He hears her move, just barely, and feels the floor give a little beneath his feet. With her hands, she nudges them carefully further apart, so that no part of him is touching her; she must be kneeling between his legs, her knees on the floor, but even though she's beneath him, she has all the power—still moving his body however she wants, her fingers curling around his calf and digging in, holding firm even when he almost jerks out of her hold.

"It'll feel better when I've seen to them," she says, a trace of warning in her voice. "Hold still."

His muscles relax, and she digs her thumbs and fingers in, working methodically. The lingering pins and needles from kneeling on the floor ease away. He hardly notices when she moves above his knees, changes the massage to long, soft strokes of her hand, broad sweeping motions over his thighs, slowly moving higher. He stiffens, though, when her thumbs feather light touches against the inside of his thighs.

"Shh," she murmurs, lips brushing against the inside of his knee. "I've got you."

She stands—he can hear her body rise—and the couch shifts beneath him as she throws a leg over his lap and straddles him, the shock of her skin against his enough to make his cock twitch. She reaches between them without further comment, pressing his length against the core of her and in.

He has no leverage like this, no range of motion; the most he could do is press his heels to the floor to thrust up against her, but he knows he isn't meant to. She's wet, _so_ wet, her walls crushingly soft around him, and his head lolls against the back of the couch while she rocks against him, short strokes that keep him deep inside her. She runs a hand up, over his hair, and he's grateful for her slow pace, because he's not going to last long otherwise, the way her nails scratch over his scalp and stroke his hair by turns.

"Focus," she says, like she's sensed him struggling. "You've been so good. Tell me what set you off last night." She wriggles on his cock, her breath hitching when it hits a good spot inside her.

"Seeing you," he croaks. "Imagining while we're on the phone's one thing, but looking at you while you're telling me what to do, while you're calm and I can't even think, it overwhelmed me, and I was already on edge from the two nights before that—"

"You lasted longer than I expected," she says, a note of pride in her voice, and sinks him deeper. A moan spills from his throat. "I thought you wouldn't make it through that second edge, you were so wound up, but you held on. I was so impressed."

She leans forward, against him, pressing him to the back of his couch, and the weight of her body is bliss. He doesn't care that he's not touching her. She's touching _him_ , and it's more than enough.

"And you've held out this whole time, too, while I touched you everywhere except where you most wanted to be touched," she goes on, her thighs tensing. Her strokes are longer now, steady, and he's not going to last much longer if she keeps moving like that, her cunt wet and warm around him, and _talking_ —

Her hand slides down the back of his head and her fingers slip the knot on the blindfold with ease; she pulls it away and he blinks in the light, briefly distracted from the heat of her body around him. She smoothes her hands over his shoulders and uses them as leverage, thrusting steadily.

"I think you've earned this," she says, one hand rising to stroke over his hair, tip his head back. "Come for me."

He doesn't need more than that, than permission, to let go; her other hand falls between them to work between her thighs, her hips stuttering until he can feel the flutter of her walls around him, and he comes with a whimper, arching up against her.

When they've both stilled, the harsh sound of their mingled breath loud in the cavernous room, she reaches behind him, her deft fingers working at the knot that holds him in place. For all that the ropework is complicated, she pulls it free without too much effort, not moving from his lap at all, and he lets her, bone-tired and dazed. She pulls all the rope free and tosses it to the couch beside them.

"Arms up," she says, gently now, and wincing, he lifts his arms until they rest against the back of the couch. She starts at one shoulder, her thumbs digging into his sore muscles, and he manages a groan of approval.

"How are we doing?" she asks him, and even though his eyes are closed, he thinks he can hear her smile, warm and pleased in her voice.

"Green," he tells her, hazy and unfocused, and his stomach chooses that moment to rumble, as if to emphasize that he's tapped out. "Maybe a little hungry."

She huffs under her breath; he thinks it's a laugh. It's going to be a minute before he has the strength to lift his head and check.

"Food after this," she says. "I'll give you a chance to recharge."

She says it like he's lucky she's giving him that much, and he doesn't dispute it. Just now, he feels pretty damn lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bondage, face slapping, vaginal sex, praise kink


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

At some point, while Shepard's putting together food, James falls asleep.

It can only be an hour at most, but his dreams are disoriented, taking him through thick trees and down long halls, trying to reach a light in the distance, only to find it put out by the time he gets there. He wakes with a start as the sun's setting, its dying light spilling color into the monochromatic room. He's slumped sideways on the couch, a crick in his neck, but there's a blanket draped over him, keeping him warm.

He stretches against the couch, working out the stiffness that's set in around his arms and back, and sits up. There's a sandwich and a glass of water on the coffee table in front of him.

He's halfway through the glass of water before he notices the note.

_Eat, and then come find me._ Her handwriting scrawls off toward the edge of the page, half-illegible, but the instructions are simple enough to follow. He digs into the sandwich.

He's halfway through before he realizes the problem.

There's no sign of his clothes—not where he left them, folded on the table, and not located by a surreptitious glance around Shepard's living room. He's going to have to walk, stark naked, through her whole house to find her. He has a strong feeling that she's not in one of the rooms he's previously been in. Hell, the house extends in the opposite direction of her bedroom, too, a whole other wing he hasn't even walked down.

If his backpack's still in the foyer, there's the sweatpants to save him, but he has a feeling she took care of that, too. He gets her message, loud and clear. If she gets some enjoyment of watching him fumble around naked looking for her, then that's what she'll get.

He goes through the rest of the sandwich—it's good, filling, but not too heavy—drinks the rest of the water, and leaves the blanket folded on the back of the couch before he heads off to explore the house.

No harm in trying the places he's familiar with. He checks the kitchen—no dice—and the foyer. His backpack, as expected, is gone. He continues down the hall he knows, right to the end, to her bedroom.

The bed's made neatly today, and there's no sign of her. It feels like he's playing some perverse, adult version of hide-and-go-seek.

He pads back down the hall to try the first closed door. Locked. He moves on. He doesn't think she expects him to try and pick any locks. That's more her area of expertise than his.

The bathroom's empty, and her office is, too. Her home gym is open; he takes a moment to look around more closely than he did last time he was here. It's well-equipped. The walls are mirrored. There's still a faint imprint of the ropes that were tied around his arms, a visible pattern on his skin.

He hurries back out of the room, into the hall. The reminder of what they've already done rattles him; he can still feel the rope around his arms, around his chest, the ghost of her touch on his shoulders, his neck. She did nothing except tie him up and pet him for a while, but it had such a powerful effect. He tries to pinpoint what it was that really unhinged him—the blindfold? Being bound like that, with her standing over him? Or just her, commanding, her coaxing touch so at odds with her demands?

He could get closer to figuring it out, if he could just _find_ her.

The other doors in this wing are all locked. Frustrated, he takes off to the opposite side of the foyer.

This wing is shorter, at least, with fewer doors. The room at the very end of the hall is ajar, a dim strip of light visible around the door. He leaves off with his dedicated search pattern to pursue this lead instead. He can always go back to rattling doorknobs if she's not there.

He pushes the door open. It looks like an entertainment room; an enormous flat screen dominates one wall, and the couches and chairs all face that way. It's currently off, though, and there's only one lamp illuminated, a blanket trailing down from the back of the couch beside the lamp.

She _was_ here, but she's not anymore.

Trying the rest of the doorknobs in this wing gets him nowhere. Except for the entertainment room, they're all locked. He has a feeling she's nearby, watching him grow increasingly frustrated and probably laughing. Seems like the kind of thing she'd get a kick out of.

He changes tactics and moves quickly through the house instead, peeking through every room he knows is open and moving on in the same breath. By the time he's worked his way to the opposite end of the house again, to her bedroom, he's halfway convinced she's not even indoors. Maybe he'll have to go looking for her outside, or call out to indicate he's surrendering to her superior hiding skills—

But she's there, as if she'd been there the whole time, lounging on a chaise beside the window in her bedroom, another book open in her lap, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, and her bare feet are crossed at the ankles. Without looking at him, she beckons him over.

He stifles his irritation at this lackluster greeting after all that; he seriously doubts she'll ever explain why she had him stalk through her house naked for fifteen minutes, trying to find her when she refused be found. His knees ache, but there's a pillow on the floor at her side, and he sinks down to it, finding his center of balance quicker than before. Knees spread shoulder-width apart, sitting back on his heels. He settles in and waits. Her fingers curled between the pages of the book look vaguely sexual. He hasn't watched her touch herself, not like that, with her thighs spread and her fingers visible, and he's not sure she'd even let him.

His cock twitches against his thigh. He curls his fingers into fists against his legs, trying to turn his thoughts to something else.

After a few minutes, she sets the book aside and reaches out to comb her fingers over his hair. He half-wishes he could grow it out a little longer, give her something to really get a grip in, but the close cut is part of his work costume, and besides—the bite of her nails against his scalp, hardly any barrier between the two, is good enough to make up for it.

"How're you doing?" she asks, her eyes roving down to look at the lingering imprint of rope on his skin. He thinks he sees her pupils expand, swallowing up the hazel of her irises.

"Green," he says, turning his head against the palm of her hand. There's definitely something to this excessive touching thing. The hair on the back of his neck is already prickling, little jolts of electricity humming in his nerves.

But it could just be her, too, her magnetism. He saw it best when they were on assignment together, the way people were just drawn to her, affected by her. She's got a terrifying gravitational pull; he feels it sinking into his bones, dragging him in.

"Speak freely," she says, her nails scratching pleasantly at the nape of his neck. "I want more than a consent check."

He takes stock as best he can when she's touching him like that, the slow drag of her fingers derailing him if he doesn't focus. "Sore," he admits, "but good. Sorry for falling asleep on you."

"No apology necessary." She takes her hand from his neck—he manages not to move, not to try and follow after to get her touch back—and picks up the thing he hadn't noticed sitting in the pool of light on the side table behind her. "I want to try something different, if you're feeling up for it."

She holds it by the braided leather handle, the soft tails dangling down from beneath her fist. The whole thing is black, a lot less friendly than the bright blue rope she bound him with earlier. She flicks the tails lightly at his cheek, a smooth, controlled movement, and they leave a soft touch over his skin, but he knows it'll hurt when she really gets into it.

He's pretty sure this kind of thing is usually meant as a reprimand, though, so he asks, "Did I do something wrong?"

"Not at all." She drapes the flogger across her lap and resumes stroking his hair. "I don't want you to think of this as punishment. It's a test of endurance. And you never know." Her eyes glint, the smile growing into a smirk. "You might like the pain."

It's a step further from his comfort zone, but he knew that she, of all people, was going to test that. "I'm up for it," he says.

She points to the foot of the bed. The bench has been moved away, out of sight. "Bend over, then."

She doesn't move, but he feels her eyes on him as he rises and walks away, the appreciative sweep of her gaze down his back. Women look at him like that every day—at the club, sure, but on the street, too—and he'd thought he'd gotten used to it, gotten over the boost to his ego, but when she does it, it's another thing entirely, feeding his vanity more than it should.

He bends over the mattress, pressing his upper body to the soft duvet, aware of how much of him this position exposes. Shepard follows when he's found a comfortable position and stops fidgeting; she appears around the side of the bed and reaches for his hands, a length of rope in hers.

"Just to keep you from reaching back and trying to stop me," she says, finishing off the knot around his wrists. "Not good for your fingers."

She lets go and walks away, out of his line of sight, but he feels her, standing close at his hip. Her hand comes to rest on the small of his back, thumb rubbing soothing circles over his spine. He closes his eyes.

"I know you can do this," she tells him. "If it gets to be too much, you know the word."

He nods; her hand lifts away. He can hear her behind him, the vague whistle of the flogger cutting through the air as she tests it. Every time the sound stops, and her feet shuffle as if she's placing her footing, he tries to brace for a blow that doesn't come. He almost wishes she'd put the earplugs back in, the blindfold back on, so he wouldn't have the opportunity to anticipate the strike.

The soft touch of the tails against his back surprises him; he jolts, his hands jerking in their bonds. She's only running the lengths of suede down his back, introducing him to the touch of it. The repetitive motion is almost soothing; he slowly eases down off his toes, relaxing as she strokes down his spine. It tickles, a little, but it's not bad. It's close to how her fingers feel, running over his skin, and he sinks against the duvet, enjoying the touch.

Of course that's when she hits, the stinging contact of two dozen tails meeting his ass when he isn't braced for it. He grunts, but it doesn't hurt as much as he thought it would. He doubts she's using her full strength just yet, but the sting is still different than what he'd expected—less of a thud, not what her hand meeting his cheek feels like at all.

She strokes a hand over the hot skin left in the wake of the flogger, and that creates a new sensation all its own. His cock twitches against the mattress, taking interest.

She takes her hand away, and this time, he _is_ braced for it; the sharper sting hits his other side, but he doesn't make a sound this time, just grits his teeth against it. The pause before the next blow is shorter. She hits twice in quick succession, closer to his thighs, one blow on either side. The pain of the first two blows is diffusing, spreading and dulling, in contrast with the sharper sting of the new, harder strikes.

At first, he finds himself thinking between every hit, half-hoping she's about to stop, half-hoping she's only getting warmed up. Eventually, though, as she settles into a pattern, every hit a little harder than the last, his thoughts slow and grind to a halt, absorbed by the sensation she's inflicting on him. He loses count, starts over, loses count again. He never makes it higher than four, but eventually, she stops, stepping in between his legs and nudging his feet further apart.

"You're gorgeous like this," she sighs, bending over his back to press a kiss to the dip of his spine. "My favorite view of your muscles yet, I think." Her tongue flicks out to taste his skin, her hand sliding down to stroke her knuckles over the heated flesh of his ass. The combination crosses wires in his brain—pain from oversensitivity, but pleasure from her touch. He tries to push back against her, but the weight of her body holds him firmly in place.

"But it was nice watching you walk, too," she adds, a trace of humor in her voice. "All that flexing. All the viewing angles. You're like a goddamn work of art." She bites at his flank, not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to surprise him; he jerks, but doesn't get far, her body still pressing his to the mattress.

"And I think you like this," she continues, reaching beneath him to where his cock's trapped between the mattress and his stomach. She backs the weight of her body off and strokes fingers down his abs, just enough to make him arch up, and then she takes him in hand, giving a slow pull. He has to fight not to thrust into her fist.

"Yes," he admits, his voice cracking on that one syllable.

She strokes him once more and releases him, moves back until her body isn't anchoring his anymore. He already misses the weight; without her, it feels like he's in danger of floating away from the bed, tether cut.

The next hit of the flogger is softer, but no less effective, considering where it lands. He knows now why she forced his legs further apart. The tails wrap around the inside of his thigh, and it seems like they fall away slowly, one by one, barely kissing the skin they just struck. He's sure she wouldn't look kindly on rutting against the mattress, but he considers it anyway.

"Yes," she agrees, "I think you like this a lot." She changes position and slaps the other thigh with the flogger, the same practiced motion, and he moans, pressing his face to the mattress.

She continues. She's warmed up now, and there's no pattern to her strikes anymore except that each one is harder. The first sting against his back and shoulder surprises him most, especially when she follows it with an equally hard strike to his inner thigh. He rocks forward in the wake of every blow, the tiny bit of friction against the mattress not a relief as much as it is additional agony. He's sticky against his stomach, panting, sweating, on the verge of release, fighting it every step of the way.

She's breathing heavily, too; he can hear the puff of it as she hits. When she finally stops again—his head's too hazy to know how much time has passed, but it feels like an hour—he realizes he's been moaning at every strike, only because now the room's so quiet except for the gasp of their breathing. He cuts off the whimper in his throat, burying his face in the duvet. If he doesn't focus, his legs quiver.

"Shh." She touches the small of his back again, strokes down over his body, his burning skin. "I knew you could do it." The note of pride in her voice is almost too much for him; he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to narrow his focus to breathing evenly, but the way she's touching him makes that impossible. "Gorgeous," she murmurs, fingertips sweeping down his inner thigh. "So good for me. Kneel down; there's a pillow between your feet."

The loss of contact with the mattress is actually worse than the little friction it yielded; he's throbbing, dying for a touch, so close to climax that he's shaking, but he kneels down, anyway, and she backs up to give him room.

Even in his half-delirious state, he hears the sound of the zipper on her jeans, the thud of them hitting the floor. She passes him to hop up on the bed, and then she drapes her legs over his shoulders, pulling him in. Her skin, soft as it is, still rubs against the flesh stinging on his upper back.

"You still can't touch, but I think you've earned a taste," she says.

He doesn't hesitate. She's wet, dripping, just from flogging him, just from looking at him, and when he presses his mouth over her and licks, the broad flat of his tongue pressing over her vulva, she moans, bucking up against his face. One of her hands falls to his hair, stroking over it, while the other rises up to pull at one of her nipples, kneading her breast. Her stomach muscles jump when he flicks her clit with his tongue, so he does it again, and again, until her groan pitches up and he moves to press his tongue against her entrance instead, massaging. She doesn't complain.

His hands are bound, but he could reach his cock if he tried. His fingers twitch, but he doesn't, not even when the scent of her floods his nose, the taste of her overwhelming in his mouth, until he can't think, can hardly breathe. He sucks her clit between his lips and her back arches, fingers tightening for purchase on his scalp.

"James," she moans, "oh, god, your mouth, feels so good, don't stop, don't stop—"

She doesn't say please; it's not a request, but an order, and he follows blindly, eyes full of the view of her body while he pleasures her, her neck straining now, her chest heaving, her heels digging painfully into his back, thrusting against his mouth while she comes.

The muscles in her thighs ease, releasing him. She lifts her head to look down at him, her eyes half-lidded and dark, and pats the bed beside her. "C'mere," she says, almost drowsily.

He doesn't need telling twice. He climbs up, and she pushes him to lie on his back in the center of the bed before reaching for the nightstand. She returns with another short length of rope, tying it into the knots around his wrists and then tying it to the headboard.

"Perfect," she murmurs, her hand trailing down his chest. She fits herself against his side, braced on one elbow, and hooks one leg around his, anchoring him to the mattress. He can feel the slick heat of her cunt against his hip. "I'm so happy with you. You didn't even try to touch yourself, did you? Such a good boy."

It should be demeaning, it should be humiliating, but she takes him in hand and strokes, root to tip, her grip loose, and he doesn't care. She leans down and, for the first time that night, kisses him. The sweeping warmth of her mouth is overwhelming, devouring, the little flick of her tongue shooting a jolt of arousal straight to his cock. She twists her wrist and he moans into her mouth, his chest tightening; she smears the liquid at the tip over the head and continues with firm, steady strokes. He isn't going to last.

"Please," he groans when she breaks off the kiss, her fist still pumping, "please, Shepard—"

"Tell me what you want," she says, leaning down to nip at his jaw with her teeth.

He's beyond embarrassment now, beyond any lingering shame or shyness. "I want to come. Please, Shepard, can I—"

"Yes," she says, her fingers tightening around him.

She works him through it, every stroke slower and easier than the last, while his back arches off the bed and the orgasm washes over him, leeches whatever strength remains right out of him. After, he doesn't feel much like a person anymore, just an empty shell, scraped clean.

She says something he doesn't hear, unties him, and slides off the bed. In a minute she's back, wet washcloth in hand to clean him up, and then she sits up against the headboard and tugs at his shoulder until he curls up with his head in her lap, her hand back to stroking his hair.

"Jesus," he utters.

She laughs, barely a puff of air. "Just me."

He doesn't have the voice to contradict her anymore; he focuses on the fingers kneading his scalp to keep him grounded and closes his eyes, trying to even out his breathing.

She lets him stay like that for a while. He drifts, almost dozing, but eventually, she shakes him awake.

"On your stomach," she says.

He groans.

"Trust me, you'll thank me in the morning." She prods until he rolls over, still grumbling. "It'll help with the stinging. With that type of flogger you won't have marks, but your skin will be sensitive for a while."

She drops a cool glob of lotion on his shoulder and starts working it in. He bites down a hiss.

"Speak freely," she says. "How was it?"

He grunts when she finds a knot in his back and presses her thumb in. "A lot better than I was expecting."

"Saw the look on your face when I pulled that thing out." She sounds a little smug. "You thought you were going to hate it."

"A lot of people react to pain like that," he points out.

She runs her fingers over his shoulder. "Not you." There's something almost affectionate in her voice.

_Not anymore_ , he thinks. He definitely blames her, but he's not sure it can be called _blame_ when he likes it so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flogging, oral sex, handjobs


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer-than-anticipated delay! Real life and creative drought, right? Why are those things such assholes?
> 
> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

Shepard gets as far as hopping up on her usual stool before the bartender starts shaking his head at her.

"No way," he says, pointing at the door. "Every time you're in here, you start something."

This is not _untrue_ , strictly speaking, but usually no one gives a shit, and everybody looks the other way. She squints across the bar at him. He does look vaguely familiar, especially the ugly slash of his mouth, flapping away at her. He wasn't at the bar when she met Vega, but maybe—

Ah. The time before that. She did break a few things. A lamp, maybe a few barstools. But she _paid_ for them. She wasn't raised in a barn.

"Ah, come on. Just looking for a drink." She slides a bill across the bar, raising one eyebrow, but she's already irritated and not great at winning people over to begin with. Her words carry an edge that clearly doesn't put him at ease.

He points at the door again. "Get out."

She's not in the mood to convince him; she takes her money and heads for the exit, the pent-up energy and irritation settling heavier on her shoulders than before. There's only so much time she can spend beating the shit out of a sandbag before it loses its effect. Three or four days, give or take, and now it's been two weeks since she picked a fight with anybody. Too busy winding up Vega. That takes focus. It's the first day all week she's left him alone—no texts, no phone calls.

She leans against her bike and digs out her phone. She should leave it, she thinks—let him suffer until Sunday and really make good on her promises if he can hold out that long—but she needs an outlet, and since this one's been denied to her, he'll have to do.

He answers on the second ring. "Hey," he says.

There's something about the way he talks to her, audible in as little as one syllable; she can't put her finger on it. Cautious, but anticipatory, and something else, too, something so easy-going and cheerful that seems out of place, the curl of his voice sliding down to settle in her chest, bright and familiar.

"Hey. You free?"

"Yeah," he says, "but I thought you were gonna leave me on the hook until Sunday."

She almost smiles despite the fizz of directionless energy still distracting her. "You're in luck. My calendar just opened up."

He doesn't answer for a second—then two, then three. "You sound pissed."

"Don't I always sound pissed?"

He snorts. "No."

Well, this is a truth it won't hurt her much to tell him. "I got booted from the bar. Apparently the bartender takes issue with my idea of a good time."

He laughs full-out this time. "What, he didn't want you beating the shit out of his customers? I'm shocked."

"I'll be shocked if mocking me helps you with that problem in your pants." Bullshit, but he doesn't have to know that. She actually likes the way he talks back to her—always testing the limits, feeling out where the boundaries are, how much he can get away with. Makes the game more fun.

"Hey, you need a punching bag, I'm available," he says, just as easy-going as before. "Won't be as easy for you to take me down if I'm prepared for it."

She _does_ smile at that. He's a terrific soldier, but he's never come out on top of a fight with her, and they had enough friendly sparring matches a few years ago for her to get a good idea of his strengths and weaknesses. Based on their back-alley match a couple weeks ago, he's evolved a bit, enough to challenge her, but she doubts he'd actually take her down.

"Careful," she says. Her irritation has started to back off now, the thrum in her blood finding a direction to press in. "I might take you up on that."

"Good. I'll text you the address of my gym. Cool little place. I know the owner."

"You want an audience for this?" She smirks, hand already digging in her pocket for her keys. "Don't remember you rating exhibitionism that high."

He clears his throat; she takes an inordinate amount of pleasure in discomfiting him. However much she enjoys the back-and-forth, the sass bordering on disrespect, the moment he's finally off-balance is the sweetest.

"A referee wouldn't be the worst thing," he says.

"Are you implying something?"

"Yeah, that I want some rules to be observed."

She chuckles. "Are you saying that I _cheat_?"

"Not knocking it," he says, casual again, the uncertainty in his voice gone. "Whatever gets the job done, right? But this is a friendly match. I want some meat left on my bones when I go home for the night. Besides. Might stand a chance if you don't have free reign."

"I can kick your ass any way you want me to, Vega. Text me the address."

She hangs up. Her phone buzzes thirty seconds later. She's vaguely familiar with the intersection; she checks it against Google maps, kicks her bike to life, and drives out into the night, the chill of the ocean breeze sneaking beneath her jacket.

The irritation's liquefied now, turned to anticipation, all of the aimlessness and misdirection of the last few hours floating away. If she was in a worse mood, this wouldn't cut it—and she wouldn't put him at risk trying to perform when she's not capable—but she caught the downward spiral before it careened out of control this time.

She pulls up to the curb. A shadow detaches from the building and comes forward to meet her. She pulls her helmet off as he approaches, ruffling a hand through her hair, and as he passes through the beam of a streetlight she sees him staring, eyes wandering from her jacket to her bike to her boots.

Damn if she doesn't get a rush from that, every time. It feeds into the headspace she's already sinking into, slipping her into the role that they both need. She used to compare it to pulling on the familiar pieces of her armor; she always knew who she was inside that suit, her focus absolute, the way forward clear. Still feels like that, actually, but before it all went sour.

She slides off the bike, tucking her helmet against her hip; his eyes follow the motion. "Hey," he says, gaze finally drifting up to settle on her face.

The scar across his cheek looks deeper in the shadows created by the streetlight; he didn't have that a few years ago. Against her better judgment, she's developing a curiosity about what happened in the intervening time, what his life's been like since they parted ways—even though it's none of her business, even though she won't cross that line.

"Looks like this place is closed," she comments, squinting at the shopfront over his shoulder. There's a light on inside, but it's far from the front windows.

"He's closing up for the night," he says. "Knows we're coming, though."

"Guess we'd better not keep him waiting, then."

He waves for her to follow him. He's tense, shoulders squared harder than usual; she expected as much, the way she's been winding him up since Sunday. She has to work not to mirror that energy. It's important that she's as relaxed as he is nervous, that it seems—for now—as if his tension is beneath her, as if she doesn't share it.

"Robert!" he calls out; the man standing near the ring turns around. "How's it going, man?" They shake hands, and James turns back to her. "This is Jane."

She doesn't think she's ever heard him say her first name; hell, she didn't think he even _knew_ her first name. It's nondescript, forgettable. She manages not to look at him, but it's a close thing. She knows he's not stupid. Her isolation is obvious, and there were rumors about her discharge, the way it always is when a high-profile veteran leaves the Alliance, but she didn't expect him to pick up so clearly that she doesn't want to be found or noticed.

Sweet of him, but she's sure that, recognizable surname uttered or not, Liara will know about this sooner or later. Always was too nosy for her own good. With all the tools at her disposal, an omission of _Shepard_ won't be enough to hide behind.

Robert holds out his hand to shake. "Good to meet you. I hear you and James have a grudge to settle."

She raises an eyebrow at James, and he rolls his eyes. "You could say that," she allows.

"Well, go ahead and warm up," he says, turning his attention back to James. "Let me know when you're ready."

She strips out of her jacket, toes off her boots, and leaves them both on a nearby chair. She's already warm, but it never hurts to loosen up a little more, so she picks up a jump rope; she doesn't think she's going to lose, but she likes to stack the odds in her favor as high as possible. Her feet drum against the ground, and she falls into an easy rhythm of counting, her breath keeping the beat until her muscles lose the last quiver of anticipation and fall in line.

When she puts the jump rope down, James approaches with coiled hand wraps, and she sticks her hands out toward him, catching him off guard. "Help me out," she suggests, pitching her voice low enough that Robert, standing on the other side of the ring, won't hear.

She watches the bob of his throat as he swallows, but he doesn't hesitate, taking it as the order it is. He slides the starting loop of the wrap around her thumb and starts wrapping. He stays focused on her hand, carefully pulling the wrap firm but not too tight, and she watches his face, the occasional tick sideways of his eyes giving away his distraction.

She knows he'll regain focus in the ring—she won't be able to cheat like this there, throwing him off-balance with a handful of words—but this is enough, for now, to make sure the match starts off in her favor. To make sure he remembers his place.

He finishes the other hand and steps back. She flexes her fingers, pleased with the result, and glances at him. "Thanks," she says, pouring every ounce of warm flattery she has in her arsenal into that single word, and the red flush on his neck spreads up to his face.

She would laugh, if he wouldn't take it as scorn for his reaction, and that's the last thing she wants. He turns his attention to wrapping his own hands. She slides under the ropes and into the ring, settling in her corner, and waits. When it comes to something like this, she has all the patience in the world; the longer she draws it out, the better it will be.

He ducks into the ring opposite her, and Robert slides past the ropes, too, stopwatch in hand. "Okay," he says, "three minutes."

Her hands come up; everything else falls away. She's only ever known peace in combat, and to everyone else, it probably doesn't look like peace. There's something pure about the burn of adrenaline, the fever pitch of anger, and it's better than anything else she's ever known.

James moves forward. She mirrors him, her eyes sharp on every twitch of his muscles, waiting for the first hit—

He swings; she ducks neatly under it, comes close, and delivers a chastising hit to his ribs. It's not her full strength, not even close, but he grunts, anyway.

"You left yourself open for that one," she says, skipping back.

They're alike, in some important ways. In battle she was always charging forward, only half a plan in her head, and he operated on the same instincts, always burning to act rather than sit still and wait, but he doesn't understand yet that this isn't really a battle. This is something else, something that requires more patience, and she's got an unfair advantage; she can see the end goal, and he can't.

But he learns from that hit she snuck in and doesn't try to go after her first again. He waits, and she surges forward; he dodges the first, hardest, of her punches, gets grazed by the second, and gets in a hit to her shoulder, but she moves fast enough to avoid the brunt of it.

The rest of the round goes the same way. Neither of them land any particularly hard hits, though when the timer goes off, they're both breathing hard, sweat glistening on his face; she can feel it rolling down the hollow of her throat.

He _is_ better for having advance warning, but she's playing with him a little—no use going out guns blazing in the first round. The fun would be over too quickly. Maybe she's not allowed to use _all_ the tricks in her arsenal, but she can still use this, lulling him as best she can into a false sense of security. It's harder to do because he knows her, knows what she's like, and he's not relieved for having survived the first bout; he's still suspicious, eyes fixed on her from across the ring as Robert tosses her a bottle of water.

One minute, and the timer pings again. She moves forward swiftly this time, faster and less cautious than before, and he matches her aggression, keeping pace. Every muscle is singing, straining—she ducks beneath the swing of his arm and comes back up, intending to slide beneath his reach and land a hard strike to his chest—

But finally one of his blows connects, solid, to her cheek; she staggers back with the force of it, the metallic hint of blood in her mouth, her jaw aching. He looks as surprised as she feels, but she feels something else, too, feral and focused that wasn't there before, a new edge she never gets a fix on before someone's wounded her. She resets her stance, grounded anew, and goes after him.

By the end of the round, they're both bleeding. There's a cut open above Vega's eye; she swishes water around in her mouth to clear the taste of blood on her teeth. She's ready to go in for the kill, poised and humming for it, but Robert says, "You've had enough."

They both turn to stare at him, disbelieving. He slides out from beneath the ropes, matching their glares with a hard stare of his own.

" _You_ are going to clean the blood out of my ring," he tells James, jabbing a finger in his direction. "Feel free to use the showers, but lock up when you're done."

Grumbling, James ducks out of the ring. Robert turns his hard stare on Shepard, and, her nerves fried at being cut, she slides under the ropes, too.

"Better get that bandaged," he adds, nodding to the cut over James's eye. "I think we can safely call this a draw."

He makes for the door, but as soon as it's shut and he's vanished down the street, Shepard looks at James to find him already looking at her.

God, that hunger. His pupils blown wide, no attention paid to the blood dripping gently onto his cheek. Her fingers curl into fists.

"One more round," he says. "He'll never know."

"Can't end it on a draw," she agrees, and they scramble back into the ring.

There's no timer, but they don't need one. With the edge of anticipation worn down, she stops dodging so many of his hits. She can absorb a lot and return most of it, quicker than ducking, and now she relishes the bursts of pain, the brutal turn the fight's taken, feeling the strength of his swings in every inch of her bones—

She knocks a good one into his jaw, and though he staggers, he doesn't go down. They circle—he squints through the blood dripping over his eye, she runs her tongue over her teeth, she charges forward—

Pain explodes, ringing, in her left ear, and the next thing she knows, she's on her back in the ring, staring up at the ceiling light with no comprehension left to her.

She gasps in a ragged breath, and James says "Holy _shit_ ," a relieved laugh riding his voice.

He sounds entirely too pleased with himself. She lifts her head enough to squint in his direction, assessing how close he is to her. He's approaching, a wide grin on his mouth; he reaches a hand down to her, offering to help her up.

She hooks her foot around his unsuspecting ankle and yanks his feet out from under him. He lands on his back a few feet from her, the breath going out of him, and she closes the distance quick, pinning him to the ground with her thighs around his hips.

It goes a long way toward correcting the balance of power. She leans down, her hands braced on his shoulders, and kisses him; all the heat that had previously been in her limbs, her fists, races here instead, to teeth tugging at his lip, to the hard press of his mouth matching hers, pushing back. She moves her hands from his shoulders to the hem of his t-shirt, tugging it free, pulling it up over his chest. He sits up to help her get it off, shifting her in his lap, kiss breaking only briefly as she yanks it over his head, her hands back on his bare shoulders now, nails digging into his skin.

He reaches for her shirt; she slaps his hand away. He tries again, and maybe the fight's addled him, made him forget himself, so she knots her fingers through his and uses her strength to bear him back down to the floor, holding him there.

She's burning up with need, has to get him inside her soon, but the blood dripping down his cheek needs attention. She pulls back and lets go of one hand—"Stay," she warns—to reach for his discarded shirt. She presses it to the wound; he grunts in pain, which doesn't help her condition, exactly. She can feel him growing hard beneath her, pressing to the core of her, and it's finally an effort to be patient when she wants him now, right here.

"Showers," she says; it comes out a little too guttural, but he doesn't seem to notice. She pulls the shirt away to see that the bleeding's already slowed. "Doesn't look like you need stitches."

She sits up—there's a breathless groan in his throat for the briefly increased weight on his cock—and gets to her feet, offering a hand to help him up. He takes it, and for a second when he's on his feet, he sways toward her, almost as if he's about to touch her, fingers digging into her hips and dragging her to him—

She _does_ want that, but it has to be on her terms, and he knows; at the last minute, he maintains the distance between them, swallowing and looking away, as if watching her for another second will break his control.

"Good boy," she says, so softly that he could miss it, but he doesn't; his shudder is proof enough of that. "Come on. Show me the way."

He leads her out of the ring, down a long hallway, and into the locker rooms. He goes to the locker that she assumes is his, twirls the dial, and pulls out a first aid kit.

"Smart," she comments.

"Don't usually need to use it."

"Sit," she says, pointing to the bench. "I'll take care of it."

She washes her hands thoroughly and then sets to cleaning the wound, standing closer than is strictly necessary. He winces when she starts dabbing the blood away, his whole body taut; she reaches for his hand and molds it around her hip, an anchor that she knows he probably doesn't need. Neither of them are strangers to pain, but she wants to keep the desire burning, something good to offset the sting of the wound. His shoulders relax. His thumb runs under the hem of her shirt, a light touch on her bare skin, and she doesn't stop him. For now, this is an indulgence that he's earned.

She'll know better the next time they go into the ring—to avoid getting swept up in the bloodlust, which isn't enough to carry her to victory against a formidable opponent—but for now, he's done so well that she has to reward him, and he's satisfied with just this, her flesh under his fingers. Helps that she likes it, too. It can be overwhelming, having someone else touch her, a sensation overload that leaves her shaky and vulnerable, but in small doses, his thumb following the ridge of her hipbone, repetitive, it's good. Easy, almost familiar, building up the heat between her thighs.

She has to school herself to impassivity, devoting her focus to tending his wound and walling herself off from that burning. He can smell blood in the water as much as she can, could press his advantage if he detected a hint of weakness; it's important that he can't, that there's no gap in the armor for him to see.

She smoothes the bandage into place, pressing the adhesive down evenly. "Done." She steps back, and his hand falls naturally away from her hip. "I need a shower."

She turns away from him, slides her shirt off over her head, sports bra following. She can feel him staring, eyes fixed hungrily on her body as she slides out of her pants and underwear; she leaves him hanging, halfway to the showers before she looks over her shoulder and adds, "Coming?"

He scrambles to follow; she closes her mouth on a laugh and cranks the nearest knob over to hot. It warms quickly, and by the time she hears his footsteps, there's steam billowing into the cool air of the locker room, warming the tile beneath her feet. She dunks her head under the stream, wetting her hair, and sweeps it back from her face as she turns to face him, blinking away the water.

He waits for her to tell him what to do, even though she can see what it costs him; he can't decide where to look, his eyes raking over her body, his fingers flexing at his sides. She reaches out to touch his shoulder, pull him closer, and he comes into the spray of the water.

She doesn't need any warming up, and he doesn't, either, but she holds his head still while she kisses him anyway, her other hand falling to his cock. He groans into her mouth when she strokes him, and the throbbing in her clit increases, hot and heavy between her parted thighs, aching to be touched. She pulls him closer until he's pressed against her, her back firmly against the tiled wall, and folds his hand around her thigh.

He understands the silent instruction; his fingers tighten against her flesh, his other hand falls to her other leg, and he lifts her against the wall. One arm around his shoulders for balance, her legs tight around his waist, she reaches between them, finding the right angle to slip the head of his cock inside her, and says, "Thrust. Slow."

She doesn't even need to touch herself like this to get off; his body presses against hers whenever he sinks into her, and it's enough, turned on as she is, to build her up. The way his cock rubs inside her is good, too, distracting her focus, but she's got enough blood left in her brain to stroke the back of his neck and murmur into his ear. "Little faster," she tells him, pressing her lips to the hinge of his jaw, and he complies, his breath a little harsher against her throat. "How's that feel?" she asks, teeth grazing his skin.

"Fantastic," he groans, his fingers so tight around her thighs that she's sure she'll have bruises tomorrow.

That brings a new heat low in her belly, spreading when he slides deep and rubs against her. For a second, her breath catches, losing rhythm, and she has to work not to gasp in his ear; she only allows herself a harder grip on his shoulders, a sharper nip of her teeth at his ear. It gets harder, the closer she gets, to think straight. Easier to keep him chained, to remind herself as much as him not to mindlessly arch against him.

His mouth opens against her collarbone. "Shepard—"

"Not yet. Wait for me, I'm almost—harder, James, _now_ —"

He presses her against the tile wall, and it's going to be soon, her back curving whether she likes it or not, her nails biting into his shoulders, and when she feels that first irresistible jolt of orgasm she says, directly in his ear, "Come."

She holds tight to his shoulders, her legs clenched around him in case his hold loosens, but if anything, his hands are even tighter on her thighs. He presses his face into her shoulder and comes with a long, relieved moan, jerking into her just as the last of her orgasm fades.

He's still for a minute, holding her against the wall, and then he says, his voice strained, "I'm going to put you down now, okay?"

She laughs, brushing a kiss to his neck, and he shivers. "Heavier than I look?"

"After all that, yeah."

He eases out of her, she gets her feet beneath her, and for a moment they stand quietly beneath the spray of the water, his hands still loose on her hips, her arms still looped around his shoulders.

"You were great," she tells him, reaching up to gently rub away the drying blood on his cheek.

He grins, the momentary exhaustion chasing out of his eyes. "Feel better?"

It disturbs her a little, but she does; the ease she feels after a random bar fight is nothing compared to this, to his skin still warm under her hands and his smile bright and fixed on her.

"Yes," she says, giving away no more than that. "You?"

"Hell, yeah."

It startles a laugh out of her, and she pushes her unease aside. Of course this feels better than channeling aggression at random strangers; this gives her a better outlet than she's had in years, gives her something to work on, a challenge to unknot. Nothing more to it than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fighting kink, shower sex, vaginal sex


	10. Chapter 10

On Friday, James strolls into work without even thinking about the wound still healing over his eye.

He feels like a million bucks—good enough that he doesn't feel the pinch of the cut, held together by the bandage. He's even whistling under his breath as he slings his duffel bag off into his usual cubby and roots around for his gear. When he turns around, though, Jack's there, her mouth pinched tight.

She points at his face and barks, "What the fuck do you call _that_?"

He has to feel at the wound before he even remembers it's visible, that other people might _care_. He can't remove the bandage and slap some concealer over it; it's still too raw for that. The bright edge on his good mood dulls.

"Just lost a fight with my front door," he lies. It comes effortlessly, even while he's wondering when he got so damn sloppy. "It's not a big—"

"Get the hell out," she snaps; her dark red lips visibly form each word, over-enunciating. "Come back when you don't look like a goddamn piece of bruised meat."

"I'm not bruised," he says, checking the mirror just to make sure. Shepard hits hard, even for a friendly match, but it was nothing like that back-alley brawl; he's a little sore in places, but nothing visible.

"Don't make me tell you again, Vega. I don't like repeating myself."

For a moment, James thinks he's going to tell her to fuck off, that he's not going anywhere, that it's not the big deal she's making it out to be. Her eyes narrow, fingers balling into fists on her hips, and he knows that if he pushes her too far, she'll tell him not to bother coming back.

Fleetingly, he thinks it wouldn't be the end of the world. He can find another job. He can do something, anything else. This is a fun gig, but it's as meaningless as everything else has been since he left the Alliance. He can find something else to replace it, simple as that.

In the end, though, he shuts his mouth and slings his duffel bag back onto his shoulder. Fuming—mad at Jack for noticing, mad at Shepard for putting him in this situation to begin with, and mad at himself, most of all, for not paying attention—he stomps around Jack and out the door.

The breeze doesn't cool his irritation; his head's full of steam, and no amount of aggressive walking is going to curb even this petty shit. In the part of his brain that's still hooked up to logic and reason, he knows that Jack's just protecting her business, and Shepard didn't put him in any situation at all. He calls the shots with her; he knows that, that he can say _red_ and she'll stop without question, that he could've said _yellow_ and she'd have scaled it back, but he didn't want to. Not even close.

Even when she isn't quite herself, he knows she'd listen. She wasn't, last night. It was subtle, but there was something brittle about her edge in that ring, something that let him sneak in that last shot. And the shower, after—being allowed to touch her, bear her weight…there was still the fact that she wore her command like a second skin, that even with his fingers digging into her thighs and her back against the tile she'd manipulated it to keep him from doing anything she didn't want him to do, but he remembers the loose relief of her laugh in the after, worn and comfortable unlike anything he's heard from her throat yet.

He tells himself to stop. He's imagining things. He doesn't _know_ Shepard, not really. Maybe some of her other squadmates did, but not James. James was only ever a temporary fixture in her life, there and gone in a few fleeting months. He can't reliably tell one of her moods from the next. He shouldn't pretend.

And he should step on this feeling—that warmth in his chest when she laughed, the one that had nothing to do with sex and a lot to do with the way the sound curled up in his gut like hot chocolate with a kick—before it did any more growing. He's not stupid. He knows that Shepard doesn't waste words, so if she says she's not interested in a romantic relationship, she means it, and she's not going to change her mind.

Grumpy as he is, he still remembers not to stomp up the stairs to his apartment. He's careful to unstick the screen door instead of yanking at it. He hates the feeling that he's creating a racket and a headache for his landlady. Maybe she putters around down there in her garden, but he never hears her, and she's probably earned the peace and quiet, old as she is.

Lowering the duffel bag from his shoulder, he shuts the door behind him and pulls out his phone on the off chance that Shepard's texted him. No luck. He feels too wired, too annoyed, inside his own skin. He could use her brand of relaxation just now; she could exorcise this directionless anger with a few well-placed slaps. He hasn't really done the initiating for that yet, though. He doesn't think she'd be against it—and if she was, her displeasure wouldn't be the worst thing in the world—but his thumbs still hover over the screen, hesitating.

Finally, he types, _Unexpected night off. You busy?_

He sets the phone down on the table in a poor attempt at pretending he's not waiting for her return message—a watched pot never boils, his abuela's fond of saying, never mind that he'd stood over a pot when he was nine until it did, just to _see_ —and goes to rummage around in the fridge, though he's not remotely hungry. He eats a decent meal before he starts a shift. It's hard work; the body needs fuel.

He thinks he hears the hum of a vibration under the crinkle of the bread wrapper and turns back to the table, but there's no message waiting.

She hasn't been in touch at all today, he realizes. She's left him to his own devices before now, but it's always felt deliberate, and this—

He snorts. He's imagining things, despite that stern talk he just had with himself. Whatever he thinks he's seen, she's got a life. She's busy doing…something. He could flag down Cortez, but he doesn't want another ribbing about the arrangement of his face, and he'd probably be coming between the Friday night plans Cortez usually has with Robert. His abuela's got her bridge group.

And he's got an empty apartment, a wide-open Friday night, and no answering text from Shepard.

He might as well move up his usual Saturday meal prep to now, then, and get it over with. He turns on some music—quietly, deferring to the hour—and gets to work. After a few songs, a solid fifteen minutes of chopping onions and bell peppers, and food coming in and out of the oven, he forgets that he's listening for his phone to buzz.

He runs out of work to do at around midnight, but he stays up until his usual three o'clock, the TV providing white noise while he browses Reddit, just in case she calls.

She doesn't.

He's sure he'll hear from her by Saturday morning, but that passes, too, and then the afternoon, and another long night where he can't go to work because the mark on his face is still visible. Less, but Jack's not going to miss it. He does loads of laundry until he loses count, trooping up and down the stairs and leaving his phone behind every time in the increasingly futile hope that it will bear fruit by the time he returns. His directionless anger has turned on _her_ now, no matter how hard he tries to shove it back down.

This has to be another game. She wouldn't just— _ghost_ , like a random hookup from a random bar. If she wanted to quit, she'd tell him. He doesn't know her well, but he knows her well enough to know that much.

His phone buzzes—not the long, single vibration of a text message, but the two short bursts signifying an e-mail. He doesn't get much of that. Mostly from work, and never this time of night; the club's in full swing, and no one has time to sit at a computer.

He flicks the e-mail open. The sender is Garrus Vakarian.

He knows that name, way at the back of his mind. For a minute he frowns at nothing, trying to remember, and then the thought slips into place on the tip of his tongue: Scars. Tall guy, ugly marks all down one side of his face and neck, cutting up into his temple; hair didn't grow back around that spot. He'd been briefly involved during the operation that James had shadowed Shepard on. The two of them had known one another for years. Shepard never stopped giving him shit about his looks or his aim or his odd blue face paint, even when they were in the middle of a firefight, and he gave as good as he got.

Why the hell is _Garrus_ e-mailing him?

_Vega,_

_I'm an old friend of Shepard's. We met once, back when you were new to N7 and Shepard was mentoring you._

_I know you're in touch with her. That's why I'm reaching out. She hasn't spoken to me since right before her last mission—before her discharge. None of us have heard from her, actually, not for lack of trying. She's probably got a new phone and a new number by now just to keep from hearing the thing ring._

_I don't know what kind of relationship you have with her, and I know she can take care of herself, but I'm worried. I don't know anything about what happened on her last operation. It was solo, classified. I just know something's not right. Never thought Shepard would fall off the grid like this. I haven't wanted to push her, and no one else has, either, but if you get a chance, let me know how she is. Would put my mind at ease._

_Garrus_

He thinks about the look on her face, the more-somber-than-usual stillness when he introduced her by her first name on Thursday night: _Jane_ , and her eyes had almost twitched sideways to meet his, had almost widened a fraction in surprise, only to close off again, shuttering.  

He's kept his mouth shut for two weeks. Garrus isn't wrong; something _is_ going on with Shepard, something way above his head, but if he hasn't told Cortez who his mystery girl is, he sure as hell isn't going to tell Scars that something's off with her. It's none of his business. It's none of James's business, either. If Shepard's ignoring her old friend, that's _her_ business.

Briefly, he thinks that this could be it—the key to getting her to talk back, after two days of silence. Just a screenshot of the e-mail, a _you know what this is about_? Just as likely, though, that it would backfire, end in her cutting contact completely. He's not willing to take that chance.

And if he wants the time to do a little more digging—figure out what's going on, on his own, without getting the big guns involved—that's _his_ business. He leaves the e-mail unanswered and goes to bed.

* * *

She's dreaming.

Knowing it doesn't help. She's never mastered that lucid dreaming bullshit, too frustrated and edgy after waking to devote time to writing down every stray piece of nonsense that her brain regurgitates. But she knows, at least, when it's temporary, when it will pass. That much has sunk in.

She's crouched down in the brush, her hands shaking as she tries to work out what the controls mean. She's running out of time; she can feel it, though there's no clock to show her the way. "Admiral," she says, one word deteriorating into wild coughing. It's been a long time since her last sip of water, and her head's tight and aching with dehydration, with exhaustion. "Hackett, I don't know how disable it."

The comm in her ear crackles for too long. "You're going to have to put it down," he says, his voice as strained as she's ever heard it. "If it makes it this far, Shepard—"

But her hands are already on the controls, guiding the drone down. There shouldn't be anything there. Just mountains, just animals. It's not a big missile. It could be worse, it could be—

But then she smells it, the stench of cooked meat, heat blowing back against her face; when she looks up from the controls, she's surrounded by them, the anonymous faces, the still bodies, crushing down swaths of the tall, dying grass. A hand closes around her wrist. James is there, his face swimming before her.

"What did you do?" he demands.

Her stomach rolls, but she coughs and swallows before it can rebel; it takes her a minute of rapid blinking, eyes watering to realize she's staring at a ceiling, not a battlefield, and she's pinned down not by the enemy but by her sheets.

She kicks at them without any strategy at all, just trying to twist herself free, her breath coming in sharp gasps. She gives a last almighty yank—something rips—and then she's scrambling out of bed, making a beeline for the open window. Every muscle quivers. She gulps down the ocean breeze, letting it wash the stink of death away from deep inside her sinuses. The wind's too brisk, too cold, for her sweat-soaked skin, but she stands in it anyway, letting it beat against her until the cold recedes and numbness begins to sink in. Only then does she back away from the window and go rummaging, shivering wildly, for a shirt.

Her brain is doing _new_ things, but they aren't necessarily worse, at least. Just different. James has never featured in this dream before, but there have been others—Garrus, usually, or Ashley, sometimes—and it's no better or worse to imagine them finding out than to imagine _James_ finding out. She'd mentored them all, in one way or another. This was not something she wanted to share with them.

But it's not getting better. That much is true, too. For the first six months after her discharge, she didn't keep track of her symptoms—too determined to ignore it until it went away—but there's been no real change since then. Better days, better weeks, sometimes. But it always comes back to this, to rolling around and listening to the too-loud drum of her own heart for three hours only to dream too vividly to get any real rest when she does, at last, sleep.

She hadn't been close enough to see them, not even to smell them. There had been no bodies. There had been no fellow soldier to question her actions.

There had only been her, the sick twist in her gut to tell her that something was not right, the tacky consistency of dust in her mouth and down her throat. Just her.

Her phone tells her it's only five in the morning. If she's lucky, the worst is over; she's tired enough to go back to sleep without dreaming. For a moment, she hovers over that last text message from James, sent more than a day ago. She's felt too off, ever since that night at the gym, to perform properly with him. There's something about that whole encounter that seems dreamlike when she thinks back on it; she doesn't have her usual clarity at all, just a blur of impressions, of bloodlust, of his eyes, full of longing and fixed on hers, of his hands wrapped around her thighs. She has the faintest bruises and the ache of a body being used a way it isn't used to, and the rough texture of his thumb skating delicately over her hipbone carved into her memory where nothing else is clear.

She has to be more careful than this. She can't chase that drug of sensation. Too messy, not what he needs, not what she wants. Nights like that happen because of moods, because the circumstances are just right. Recreating it probably isn't even possible; trying to is not smart.

She can guess why he was unexpectedly free on Friday. No more bouts in the ring for the two of them, and she has to double down on care taken for marking. She feels a needle of irritation for his profession; they happen to share enthusiasm for that particular kink. Taking it off the table doesn't exactly limit her, though. They have plenty in common.

Why the career swap? Why isn't he still with the Alliance, kicking ass like he was meant to do? She's wondered in passing before, but now the question comes back, more insistent. He'd been determined to become an N7—a good one, too, the best of the best. That was only a few years back.

His contract would've been up by now, but she was sure he'd have signed another one, just like she had.

This is not her problem. He isn't isolated and stagnant—not like her. He knows people, sees people. Whatever reasons he has for leaving the Alliance are his own.

If she feels better when she wakes again, though, she'll call him. She's been waiting for an opportunity like this since the first night, hoping that things would take this shape, that they would be as compatible as they are. If he's off work because of her—because of them—she knows exactly how to make the best of it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the end notes for kinks featured in this chapter.

The box rests almost innocuously on the countertop between them.

Hell, Shepard gives him whiplash. First she ignores him for almost three days; now she's giving him presents and inviting him over for an extended…date. If that's what these things should be called. Maybe a sexy sleepover?

He eyes the box, wary.

"What is it?" he asks, and she rolls her eyes, loose strands of her hair stirring in the force of her exhale.

"Why don't you open it and find out?" she says, leaning forward against the counter, which, hey—gives him a nice view of her cleavage over the box, at least. He wishes he could still see her legs; it's been an unexpectedly warm day for November, and she opened the door wearing shorts. Shepard has damn good legs, lines of muscle all the way down, still enough softness in the curve of her thighs to really dig into. He thinks he saw the faint shadow of a fading bruise in the shape of his fingers as she led the way into the kitchen.

Makes him dizzy, thinking of that mark. That he could leave something on her, however briefly, an indicator that he was there between her thighs, that he held her up with his hands. The rush of it is heady, intoxicating.

He pulls the box toward him. It's nothing fancy: square and shallow, unadorned black cardboard with a crack running all the way around, easily opened. He fits his fingers into the gap and pulls.

It takes him a few seconds to process what he's seeing. A thick leather band rests on the tissue paper inside, dark brown, one end looped through a silver buckle.

The bottom drops out of his stomach just as she begins to speak.

"I thought this might be a good compromise on the marking issue. The point of it is to remind you that here, you belong to me." He doesn't dare breathe, or move, in case the apparition fades, but she reaches out into his line of sight and scoops the collar from the box, hooking it around one finger. "But you can take this one off when you need to."

He tries to unstick his jaw, with little success. The low thrum of arousal in his gut intensifies almost painfully.

"Would you like to put it on?" He doesn't think he's imagining that note of sweetness, of affection, in her voice; when he looks up at her face, he can see it there, too, written subtly in the smirk pulling up one side of her mouth, the eyes flicking up from their study of the collar. Her gaze snags on his throat, and he wonders if she can see his pulse, beating against his skin.

"Yes," he says. The word comes out hoarse. "Please."

She slides the collar down until it's looped around her wrist. "Clothes off," she says, "and meet me in the bedroom."

He gets another fantastic view of her legs as she walks around the island—the bruise on her thighs faint but visible in a strip of blinding sunlight—and vanishes into the hallway. It's half a minute later that her instructions finally permeate his brain. He scrambles to obey.

Yeah, Shepard gives him whiplash, but he loves it.

He leaves his clothes in a pile on the floor, too rattled to linger and fold them, and follows her path down the hall. She's sitting on the bench at the end of the bed, shoulders comfortably braced against the mattress, and she turns to look at him when he enters, her eyes sweeping down his body. There's a vague hunger on her face as he kneels at her feet.

Her hands frame his throat, the collar strung between them. His chest tightens, squeezing until he can't draw breath quietly; she pulls the band through the buckle and slips her fingers between the collar and his neck, checking the fit.

"Deep breath," she says, and he just manages it, desperately filling his lungs. "Not too tight?"

He shakes his head. Her fingers tighten around the collar and pull him back, forcing him to look up at her. It tugs at his throat. He's so overwhelmed by the sensation of it, cool and supple against his skin, that he doesn't notice she's waiting for his response.

"Answer when I ask you a question," she chastises.

His dick throbs, half-hard already, distracting him. She hasn't even touched him, not really—clinical, absent brushes only as she tightened the collar. He is in so, so much trouble.

"Not too tight," he says, and then, hoping to get back in her good graces before she can fixate on his lapse, "thank you, Shepard."

She considers it, her eyes fixed thoughtfully on his, but her hand doesn't leave the collar, and he doesn't mind. "Your restraint has impressed me," she tells him. "I expected you to try harder to get my attention."

He's fervently glad now that he let Garrus's e-mail rot in his inbox. "I knew you would tell me when you wanted me."

Her eyelids lower to half-mast; she lets out a low chuckle. "You make it sound so easy. You weren't waiting on tenterhooks, jumping every time you thought you heard your phone ring?"

He swallows, trying to figure out what she wants to hear. She gives the collar a little tug.

"Tell me how it was," she says. "Tell me the truth."

"Frustrating," he manages. "I wanted…"

But he doesn't go on; he still has some pride, and besides, what he _wants_ borders dangerously on what she _doesn't_ want. He's starting to think that the pep talk he gave himself the other night was in vain, because he has never craved anything the way he craves her, and he doesn't really believe that's just the sex addling his brain. If it were, wouldn't he spend his spare time fantasizing about her instead of burning up with curiosity about her?

"It doesn't matter what I wanted," he says.

"Right," she says, and the fingers of her free hand touch lightly on the healing wound over his eyebrow. "What matters is what you _need_."

Her voice sparks memories of what she's done to him so far in respect to his needs; whatever blood is left in his brain drains out of it.

"You do need a reward," she says, her hand sliding up to his hair. His eyes slip half-closed without his explicit say-so. "I've kept you on a tight leash, and you've gone along with it with minimal complaining." She pauses; he thinks he hears her throat click. "Would you like to be allowed to touch me?"

He wishes his eyes had been wide open; he hears something in her voice, something almost strained, even vulnerable, that makes him wonder what he might have seen on her face. By the time he's focused on her again, there isn't anything amiss there, just her usual cool façade, one eyebrow raised slightly.

"Yes," he says, " _please_ ," and shuts his mouth before a torrent of embarrassing begging falls out in the wake of those two words.

She gets up, her hand falling away from his collar, and steps neatly aside. She points at one corner of the mattress, at the foot of the bed.

"Kneel there and wait."

He hurries to obey; the mattress and layers of sheets and blankets are more forgiving on his knees than the floor, anyway. Without any fanfare, she begins to undress: her shirt first, slid over her head to tousle her hair. He barely has time to appreciate the sight of her lean stomach, the soft rise of her breasts above black lace, before her hands twist behind her and she pulls the straps of the bra from her shoulders.

There's nothing remotely sexual about the way she undresses—she just gives a sigh of relief, nothing tantalizing about it, when the pressure of her bra lets up and she can toss it aside—but James would never expect Shepard to make a production of taking off her clothes. She still looks damn good doing it. The side of her body where her scars are worst is concealed in shadow, and he wonders—what a dumb thing to be wondering about right now—if she's self-conscious about them.

Her shorts drop to the floor; she hooks fingers around her panties and wiggles them down, too, and then she's climbing onto the bed to get comfortable on the pillows. She stretches out when she finds a good spot, her toes pointing, her back arching, thrusting her breasts upward. Almost lazily, she cracks one eye open and beckons to him.

Even though she's given him permission, even though he's now hovering at her side, he doesn't dare touch her. She reaches up to wrap her fingers around the back of his collar, her hold loose, her forearm draped across his shoulder.

"I'll pull if you do something I don't like," she says. "But you won't, will you? I know how you like to please me."

There's something fragile there in the current of her words, for all that she smirks like she always does, for all that her voice crawls down his spine, reminding him of all that things he's done to please her. Anything, he's starting to think. He would do anything.

"I'll stop if you pull," he tells her.

The scars on her cheek contort when she smirks like that, all lopsided. "What are you waiting for, then?"

He slides down to the bed beside her, pressing his body against hers, and fits his hand against her cheek. He can feel the rise and fall of her breath, still slow, just beneath his arm. He turns her head and kisses her.

Her fingers tighten around his collar, but she doesn't pull. Her mouth opens, just slightly, yielding to him; he wraps his hand around the back of her neck and presses his thumb to the pulse in her throat, the beat of it steadily increasing. He pulls away, just far enough that their lips part and he can feel her breath against his mouth, and tightens his fingers in her hair before kissing her again.

Her body flexes against his, the curve of her hip soft and warm against his dick, but he ignores the obvious invitation. He wants to make her as senseless as she makes him. She'll never beg, but seeing some of that wildness on her face, breaking through her perfect control—that would be enough.

Her free hand reaches up to stroke lightly over his shoulder, down his bicep. His thumb pushes her chin up, his tongue flicking out to touch her lower lip; he feels the breath shudder in her chest for the briefest instant before she inhales smoothly again. Her lip's chewed up a little, actually, just inside, not visible if you're looking at her, but he can feel the texture of it beneath his tongue. Her fingers dance down, over his ribs, until they curl around his hip and pull him tighter against her. He strokes his hand down the curve of her throat in retaliation, resting his thumb at the gap of her collarbone. Her back arches, trying to thrust her breast into his hand, but he runs up to her shoulder instead, fingers barely touching her skin.

She bites his lip, a quick pressure that slips away when he pulls back. When he opens his eyes, her mouth is swollen, her eyes fixed on his face, still clear and sharp as ever.

Her lips part—about to say something—but he stops her, leaning down to kiss her more deeply; he lets go of her shoulder and blindly fits his hand around her thigh instead, fingers pressing in right where Thursday's bruises are turning color, and her throat clicks. Her breath stutters against his mouth. She inhales, and when she lets the air out again, a whimper comes with it, some cross between pleasure and pain. He keeps his hand there, right there, and her nails dig into his shoulder, and her mouth parts a bit wider.

Maybe this is a passing thing—for her, for both of them—but there's something freeing in the gift of these stray marks, the shadows that look to anyone else like ownership. They mean something else entirely, that someone saw his need and fulfilled it, with no obligation to pay it back.

He grabs a fistful of her hip and pulls her on top of him, her legs sliding neatly to either side of his. Her hand slides around to wrap fingers around the front of the collar instead, her knuckles brushing his throat. She shifts until his cock is pressed flat against the wet heat of her cunt; she rocks once against him and sighs into his mouth, but he slides his hands down to her hips and stills her. Good as it feels, he has other ideas.

He spreads his hands wide around her hips, her ass; she's rounded, and only a little soft, but he touches every inch of her, reveling in the give of her skin. His hands slide up her back, follow the dip of her spine, and he pulls away from her mouth to press a kiss to the base of her throat and up, flicking his tongue out to taste every inch. He feels, rather than hears, her groan, the vibration of it beneath his mouth. Her hips flex against his, and the head of his cock slips into her tight heat.

He almost lets her for a moment; she feels fucking perfect, and he knows from experience that the deeper he gets, the better she feels, but there's time for that later. He slides out of her—he hears her moan, this time, breathy and right in his ear—and rolls her carefully onto her back again, arm sliding beneath her shoulders to hold her, and cups her breast in his hand.

She arches into his touch. "I'm going to let go of the collar for now," she says, only the barest rasp in her voice, but even though she lets go, he still feels the guiding weight of her hand there. It's good. It's _great_ , the reminder, the way the leather sits around his neck, warm now from his skin and her hand. He rolls her nipple between his fingers, and a low, rich moan spills from her mouth.

He watches for a while, stroking and touching her breast, feathering his thumb over her nipple, and when she's breathing more heavily than he's ever heard her breathe—combat excepted—he leans down to take her into his mouth, gently suckling. Her hand rises, fingers clawing for purchase in his hair, holding him tight to her flesh. His teeth scrape gently against her, tongue flicking the way it would—will—against her clit, and her stomach tenses beneath his hand as it travels down, only to stop just short of her pubic hair.

She groans; he doesn't think she's ever been this vocal before, so he repeats the process with the other breast, hand sliding back up to continue touching the first, spreading his saliva in lazy outward circles from the stiff pink peak of her nipple.

"Goddamn it," she croaks, her neck craning over his arm, "I thought when I told you you could touch me, you'd _touch_ me."

"Isn't this touching?" he asks, as smug as he dares, stroking a hand down the curve of her waist, out over her hip.

Her eyes glitter in the fading light. "I want your fingers inside me right now," she says—more a demand than an order, but he follows it anyway. She's so wet, so slick, that it's nothing to push his fingers right inside her—slow, but steady. She shifts her hips to take him fingers deeper, and he can feel her squeezing around him. He lowers his head back to her breast, sucking harder, and pulls his fingers slowly from the vice of her body.

She whines—barely—but he hears it, high-pitched and needy, and her eyes are fever bright when they open. He pushes his fingers deep again, and she shudders and flexes her hips to take them as deep as they'll go.

For a few moments, it's quiet except for her strained breathing, the occasional hitch of a noise breaking in her throat. She doesn't close her eyes again, but her eyelashes do flutter, as if she's fighting to keep them open. He's just sliding his fingers completely free, planning to turn his attention to her clit instead, when her hand pulls on the collar around his neck.

He freezes. "Good boy," she says, her voice husky and rough, her lips swollen and chin red from where his mouth devoured hers, from where his stubble scraped her skin. She looks more debauched than she ever has, but there's still a hard glint of control in her eyes, stronger now that his fingers aren't stroking inside her.

"I'm going to let go of this for a second, but don't move," she says, and her hand releases him. She doesn't go far, only rolls onto her side away from him so that he has an unimpeded view of her ass. If he can't be touching her, that's a nice consolation prize. And just below, down the curve of her thighs, he can see the bruises clearly, refreshed by his fingers.

He wants to touch them, trace over them, kiss them as they begin to fade, create new ones in their wake. No strings, but they still have time. Maybe he'll get another chance.

She wiggles closer until her back is braced against his chest, and then she spreads her legs, propping one on top of his. His cock juts into the opening left between her thighs; he can feel the heat radiating from her, the humidity. She reaches down to loosely take hold of him. He thinks he hears her sigh; he feels it, her body expanding against his, draping more comfortably against him as she exhales.

"Perfect," she murmurs, pressing the length of him to the heat of her. He takes a deep breath, trying not to focus on the too-tight skin throbbing between her hand and her cunt. She adjusts, just a little, pressing her ass back against him, and the head of him slips inside her. "Thrust slowly," she says, her hand drifting up and back again to rest on his collar.

He sinks gratefully into her tight heat until he can get no deeper, and then he begins to pull back. Briefly, her hand leaves his collar to lift his hand from her hip and press it between her legs instead. She's slick, her clit swollen, and she exhales hard when his fingers gently stroke her.

"Remember," she says, "don't come until I say."

"Wouldn't dare," he tells her, but he dares to kiss her neck, tongue flicking out to taste her skin.

"Watch the sass," she warns, but she does tip her head to give him better access.

It's torture, but he's never known torture to feel so damn good: the vice of her body dragging on his cock with every thrust, the hiccupping rhythm of her breathing, the subtle roll of her hips back against him, subtle movements matching his pace. If it weren't for having her to touch—keeping it feather light, the way she likes best—his fingers would be bruising her hip, digging in to try to funnel off some of his energy.

He tries not to focus on how good it feels. He thrusts slow enough that he can't quite get to the edge, and she doesn't try to speed things up; her hips roll to meet him, never trying to skip ahead, even though he can feel her muscles winding tighter just above his hand, her back stiffening against his chest.

"Right there," she breathes, and her hand leaves his collar and gropes blindly behind her to seize on his ass, pulling him as deep as he can go and keeping him there, "right there—"

Her nails scratch his skin, just barely; he circles her clit, faster, pressing harder, and she shudders and tightens around him. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathes hard against her neck, and silently thanks her hand for holding him still.

When she finally lets him go, she moves a dozen times faster than he ever has in the wake of an orgasm. While he's still focused on not coming his brains out, she pulls away and gives his shoulder a gentle shove to push him onto his back. He blinks, and she's kneeling between his legs, a predatory grin on her face.

"That was your best performance yet," she tells him. Her breath touches his still-slick cock, jolting him. "I'm sure this is going to be over quick, and you can come when you want to, but the longer you hold on…"

She kisses the head of him, then opens her mouth and sucks him deep. He doesn't think he can last three minutes of this, let alone three days, but he reaches blindly for something to hold onto, and she gives him her hand.

He squeezes it tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Collaring, marking


End file.
